Harley Benton Bass Guitar Kit P-Style Reviews

Great value deal!

I found the best way to appreciate what matters in a popular style of bass is to put one together yourself! I am surprised at the quality of the body item in this kit and also the quality, accuracy and finish of the neck assembly. I part-assembled to try the fit of all parts. I separated the items before shaping, sanding and spraying final clear lacquer on the wood, leading to easy assembly and adjustment. A good budget bass - and easy to customise!

Impressed

Stumbled upon this product via YouTube and thought why not, or how bad could it possibly be. However every minute from start to finish of building this kit, from routing the headstock to stringing up and jamming have been a sheer delight. My inner smile going full beam, and for the price its astonishing. The only criticism I have that approaches negative, would have to be the thin mass bridge (which I exchanged for a high mass) making it neck heavy to play..... However the high mass bridge helps with this. Utterly thrilled with this product. Hats of to HB once more.

Looks and sounds good

Bought this kit. Sprayed with metallic lake placid blue and go faster silver stripes. Looks and sounds good once set up. Would love to add a picture.

Great product, poor QA

Overall the product is great. Pickup isn't anything to write home about, but it is serviceable. Tuners have some spots where it doesn't change the tuning but hold up tuning pretty well. My main 2 issues are: - Body is sealed but really unevenly. I do recommend sanding this down and polishing at the very least, but i'd suggest adding a couple layers of sealer again, if you want to preserve the wood look. - One of my kits was missing 9 screws (for the bridge and strap buttons), as well as screws and springs for the pickups. Other than that the kit has everything you need in there to assemble it; the other kit I ordered was not missing anything.

Very solid and reasonable

For the money you pay i think its a perfect project

Also its very useful for other things as well

For example you maybe want to make a bass on your own and you need the measurements for everything or you even want to take some part out

Its very very good for what you pay

Worth

Worth the price. The body was smooth but the frets were poking a little. Overall well done. Pickups were not good, they were ok.

Better than expected!

This guitar is no match for the Fender Custom Shop, but let's be realistic....for the price it's AMAZING!

I notice that a few other reviews have said that some of the pre-drilled holes were misplaced, but I didn't find this. Everything was pretty much bang on and the finished guitar is well aligned. I used Fender's online guide for set up, and it plays well, with good intonation.

Body is really light, which is good on the shoulder but it makes it a bit head heavy. If balance is an issue for you then the body may be too light.

Acoustically it seems to resonate really well, but plugged in it initially sounded weak compared to my other bass (which cost x10 more). I swapped the strings for flatwounds and this totally fixed the 'weak' sound. It's both full and open, and I'm so impressed at this price range. The volume pot has a terrible taper that is pretty much all or nothing, but this is a simply cheap swap out.

The only thing that feels cheap (weight aside) is the tuning heads, which are a bit light and not as smooth as more expensive ones, but for the price they are not below expectations.

Time will tell how stable it is, but first impressions are that it is very useable, and I would happily gig with it. So much better than the cheap guitars of my youth.

Highly recommended!

Great Introduction to Guitar Building

This has to be the simplest kit to put together. You can expect to do some work on the fret ends, the nut slots and intonation. The body was pretty enough to be finished with an oil but I have done mine in fiesta red.

The only hiccup was the bridge which did not align with the pre-drilled holes and caused an hour of head scratching until I got it into place.

Fully assembled it plays like a dream and I have more guitar than I payed for.

Excellent kit for experiments

Excellent kit for experiments such as practicing on finishing or learn how an electric guitar or bass is built like. For it's price the electronics and the pickup are pretty good and the quality of the woods in my opinion are better than other basses at this price point!

Great for getting your feet wet

TL:DR- Good kit all around, however you may get unlucky with quality control. At this price, it is expected. Buy new pickups ASAP. If you put time (and some more money) into this bass, you will find it to be genuinely fantastic to play.

This kit is an amazing buy, especially for someone who loves putting things together. I recommend you to buy it, especially if you are in Europe (and don't have to pay almost as much as the instrument for shipping). I, however, must list some gripes I have, which I will proceed with below.

To start, I understand that this kit is $85, so I am not mad, just a little disappointed. My main and most significant gripe is to do with the bridge. A single saddle height adjusting screw was extremely tight, leading to it being stripped, removing my ability to adjust it. I have managed to do fine using only half however seeing the saddle all tilted is irksome. My other issue was with one of the tuners being rough however honestly it isn't a big deal as it doesn't effect tuning.

Now, to some smaller gripes. The volume pot is very cheap, and really is more of an on-off switch than a smooth curve. The neck is very wide and thick which makes it heavy, causing significant neck-dive. I find this very annoying but didn't put it in the above section due to the understanding that this is expected on a cheap instrument. I also found the pickups to be extremely underwhelming. Expected at this price point.

Now, to what I have changed to make this bass truly fantastic. I am fortunate enough to have changed pickups on my other p-bass so I had some genuine fender pickups ready for a swap. I am a novice with soldering, however I managed to get everything hooked up. Small note, I soldered the ground wire to the bridge instead of it being loose like the instructions have it. Since the stock pickups don't require a backing to stay together, I had to find some foam laying around to hold my fender ones properly. Other than the pickups, I also added strap locks, and a new bridge from Hipshot to avoid worrying about the botched screw. Lastly, I put in a neck ship to help with getting the action I wanted.

In terms of physical work I have done, I have leveled the frets which also included polishing, along with shaping the headstock. I recommend anyone who does it, gets some nice small files (I managed to mess up my fretboard's edge using a large one). That's why we buy these instruments, though, right?

Another thing, is setup. I nearly completely compressed the spring on the E string with how far I had to adjust for intonation, however the whole instrument was properly intonated within the reach of the stock bridge. Now with my relief and action set right, along with good intonation, my bass feels and sounds amazing to play.

I genuinely love my bass, which I lovingly named rattle-can for how much it buzzed before I did the fretwork. I recommend that anyone with the means to do so, pick one of these up. It is a great time and super rewarding to see it when you are done.

Low quality as expected

The wood is not bad at all, although that's just about it. All the rest is really poor. I broke two screws, as their quality is really bad, and things don't fall perfectly in place.

You get what you pay for.

Easy to assemble, fun to customise to your heart's content.

I had a blast building my first DIY bass. It's great to get to know the ins and outs of how a bass guitar works and all its parts.

It's particularly fun to shape your own headstock. I made into a sort of nose or beak that makes me smile every time I pick it up and play it. I painted the body and headstock in matching fiesta red (that part can take a few days) and then assembled the whole thing in half an hour.

Great tuners and decent pickups that capture the characteristic P-bass growl. Good quality for the price.

Fun first project

A very decent kit. Everything included.

Good for first time build.

Had issues with screws breaking that is used to fasten the tuners.

Great value

Kit arrived quickly and was of great value

I've just completed my one of these.

Much fun shaping the headstock, I took the body right back to give it a tru oil finish and gave the headstock a decal.

A small amount of fret dressing (a couple of high ones)

it's a really nice bass, sounds great, plays very well.

it's a bit neck heavy, i think a fender high mass bridge would balance it out lovely.

The body unfinished in the video is a bit red / orange. Having finished mine it's a lot lighter / more blonde / strawberry blonde in colour, looks very nice. But in photo's it's still quite dark.

A lot of fun for not s lot of cash, looking forward to gigging it...I've been playing for 32 years and I'm confident to use this bass live.

OK.

For the money - perfect kit. Neck fits the pocket perfectly. Hardware and electronics are standard like in every cheap guitar/bass kit and solderless, body not to much attractive but with a little work can look really good. A few sharp edges here and there (standard in every kit). I can recommend this kit without hesitation.

Amazing Value

Needed something cheap to practice while not having access to my nice basses. Sounds like good P-Bass. Give it a good setup and don't really see a reason why I wouldn't use this live or in the studio.

Quality is what you would expect. Some screw holes not quite in the right spot. But for this money, it's not even worth complaining about.

Best value bass I ever encountered. It's minimal features are more than enough to never need any major upgrades.

Big very very

P-Style Bass

I am not a bass player but I decided to have the full XP and build it and then play it. The kit looks to be a solid kit with basic kit pieces parts. I am sure it will suit me fine and I can upgrade the components as I am going.

Good clean fun!

I really enjoyed noodling about on this bass. I scraped the pickups and bridge, used a Fender Hi Mass bridge and some EMGs and it sounds pretty good!

The body reminds me of alder and I actually really like the weird composite they use for the fretboard, plus its a nice chunky neck.

I'd totally recommend this for a fun DIY project, and at the end you can build yourself a pretty nice bass, especially for the money - I would definitely do this again and I am curious about the other HB kits!