Electric Guitar Kit JA : Far Exceeded My Expectations

I thought this would be a fun project and reviews of the Harley Benton kits were pretty good. However, I didn't expect this to become one of my favourite guitars.

Pros:

- The neck is phenomenal for the price.

- No fret burrs

- The truss rod did not need adjusting after installation and stringing

- Very comfortable, fat profile

- The binding, fret markers and amaranth fretboard look great

- The body is well made.

- Screw holes and neck pocket lined up perfectly

- Neck fit snugly into pocket

- The pickups sound great.

Cons:

- Hardware is cheap, as expected.

- Tuners are a bit rough when fine-tuning but it stays in tune very well.

- Nut is plastic.

- The neck has a loud, scratchy sound when bending the strings. It could be the frets resonating through the amaranth fretboard but is not audible through an amp input. Not a big problem at all.

I could complain that the pots are minis but they actually sound great with the pickups. I've never used P90s before. They sound better and seem to be more versatile than all of my other electric guitars. It produces a beautiful twang for country, surf or goth. Lush, thick sounds for more jazzy tones and sounds fantastic for metal, including low-tuned, doom stuff.

In my build of this kit, I dug out the grain of the body with a wire brush, covered it with metallic leaf and sealed it with a gloss varnish. The grain gave the foil leaf a nice texture that dispersed its reflective properties. I spray-painted the pickguard black, sealed with a matt varnish and changed the volume and tone knobs. This guitar looks stunning.

I'll change out the tuners, nut & bridge and will probably change to pots to 280k. Will probably also add a Goldo or Duesenberg tremolo. The new hardware will probably cost twice as much as the kit but this guitar will be a keeper and pride-of-place in my collection.