Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit DC Style Reviews

Good value

Really enjoined building it. All items checked vs photos and were there. The headstock & hums were better than expected making a decent intro guitar. Sound & overall quality vs the cost is very good.

Nice DIY project

Just opened the package - not mounted it yet but plan is to have it done soon - painting prepared, installation kit prepare, installation tools - forgot to order, but will use what I have... -

Well packed, no pieces missing (at a first glance) - hard to say something about the sound of it as it is a DYI project for late april, beginning of may

For a DIY kit it's great what you get for the price.

I assembled and spray painted the guitar in two days. It was very easy, providing patience is of the essence. Although some components feel rather cheap and therefore not as sturdy, to be expected at this price, with new pickup, bridge, etc upgrades the guitar sounds fantastic. It took me a while to adjust the truss rod to my requirements but in the end I got the guitar to sound and look the way I wanted. I hate compromise. PS I have rated the sound only one star because I never used the pickups it came equipped with, therefore I couldn't express my view, however, if I were to rate it based on my pickup upgrade, I would have rated it five stars.

Great Kit

Although this kit had a bolt on neck I went ahead and glued it in and it came out great.

Bad fit, poor quality tuners

Put together two of these. On one the holes for the neck joint was terribly misalignet. Holes for pickups, trussrod cover and pickguard also badly aligned on both. Pickguard needed to be filed to fit between pickups on both sets. Pickups are all right, but things get very muddy very quickly when adding gain much past crunch. Tuners are terrible, they stay somewhat in tune but they are so bad tuning is really difficult. One of them even broke. Nut needs to be filed to correct height, it is way too high as is making low chords out of tune. Neck is fine though, decent fret job and the profile is ok. One of the kits had a nick in the body, the other one had a spot of white impurity in the dark fretboard which was very visible. Not the best QC on these it appears. I will need new tuners for both kits to make them worth while playing. Also the nut will be replaced. Will try to replace magnet in the pickups to see if that clears things up before considering full replacement. Electronics are cheap otherwise but work well. Small pots but they seem to be of correct values.

Was Blown Away

Easy to build (around three hours including beer and herbal breaks), instructions concise and all parts intact and in good shape. The neck was one off the straightest I've ever seen and the pickups cook.

Better instructions could be given for wiring to the toggle, it's kind of a crap shoot there, but the quick connect and a screwdriver makes it a 5 munite fix.

I'm leaving it in the wood finish and letting natural stains (most legal- LOL) like snot, sweat, cigarette burns and spilled drinks give it it's rock n' roll finish!

Excellent product for an unbelievable price, no mods necessary (not even the tuning peg).

Good kit build

Fun kit and my first relic build. I painted it sky blue but may do a psychedelic paint job on it.

Nice guitar for beginners.

I use it as my humbucker guitar, love jazzmasters and teles. Great sound, works well with pedals, shipping in Russia was perfect. The neck is very accurate. Very nice for this price

This is the choice for beginners.

If you want to know how guitar works and you do not want to take apart your more expensive guitar. Or if you want to try yourself paint a guitar and work with the guitar wood overall, then this is your product. Go for it.

Completely awesome

When the diy kit arrived I was amazed of how ready to play the wood felt, materials are of a very good quality. I will start building it, but it feels like I won’t have any trouble with it.

Kit Guitar

Don't bother - neck to body connection sub-optimal, almost impossible to adjust intonation afterwards, buy something else!

Great learning experience, surprisingly OK guitar, wood should be improved

(edited after upgrading the guitar after some months' use)

This was my first guitar building kit. It was a fairly easy assembly. Holes were pre-drilled accurately, and electronics were pre-wired and could be hooked up without having to solder. So perfect as a first project.

The result was a fully playable guitar, though with some issues:

- didn't hold tuning particularly well

- very sharp fret ends that even caused finger bruises

- quite dull sound, little dynamics

- body too light, so it nosedives a bit when wearing a strap. The wood is also quite soft and easy to scratch

After building another guitar kit from another vendor a bit later, I had a bit more confidence to revisit the DC, and basically stripped it down to the woodwork and redid mostly everything:

- new tuners (Grover)

- new nut (Tusq)

- Golden Age pickups from StewMac

- levelled, recrowned and filed frets

After this upgrade, the tuning problem is fixed, the neck plays easy and fast, and the sound is much improved, though still a bit dull compared to my other guitars. I've analysed this sound problem with audio software, and it's measurable that high frequencies roll off faster than my other guitars. After reading some articles, I suspect the latter problem has to do with the very light woodwork and resulting lack of resonance, but I'm not an expert.

To summarise:

Pros:

- Perfect learning kit, little equipment required

- Very decent guitar for the price

Cons:

- Wood not so good: too light, easy to scratch, impacts sound. Much sanding required to get rid of pre-sealer before painting

- Included pickups quite dull

- neck is a bit on the wide side

- Instruction manual doesn't mention important setup steps that would greatly improve the guitar (eg frets)

Overall:

- Good starter kit that can be upgraded to a very decent instrument. Cheap wood limits how good it can become.

I love these.

I have done 3 of these, carefull assembly makes them a players dream.

You can swap the parts for better if you need, but again, carefully done, the standard kit gives you a perfect guitar in every way.

The cost of this kit brings these great guitars home to me, this will not be the last one I build.

A very good way of understanding guitars.

Great fun and educational too

Had great fun building this guitar and learnt a lot doing it. The guitar sounds great, but I have had some problems with intonation and tuning that I have never quite got to the bottom of.

good guitar for little money

High quality materials, but for some reason the holes were drilled crookedly and the tomann did not put a lining under the heel of the neck, picks were stolen on the way. But overall I am very happy with the guitar.

Killer ax

Looks, plays and sounds great. Low action and no fret buzz. Put in EMG's with Grover tuners. Sweet guitar.

damn good for the price !

Great guitar, assembly was easy, some pre drilled holes slightly off but all the main ones for bridge and saddle spot on, frets need a bit of polishing but great neck, feels nice and quality very good. When finished and assembled the guitar sounded great and pleased with result. Will use in my band for some live gigs.

The kit is ok but the body wood is very bad. I used all the material to build another guitar and the body is for the boiler.

Better than expected, fun to build, great value

I am a home player and enjoy learning and playing different styles. I've had a few electrics over the years, currently own a couple of decent mid-range guitars. I bought this kit as I wanted something different and to put my own mark on it - it was also a 'lockdown' project to keep me busy!

Arrived very well packaged. I immediately ignored all instructions and focussed on working on the body. My objective was a natural type finish, not too glossy, so I went with Tru-oil. Youtube vids were helpful, it took a lot of sanding over many days and I am really pleased with how it looks. The body is obviously constructed out of pieces, so it was never going to look totally amazing, but I am very happy with it and the graining does look nice. Tru-oil does not darken the wood a great deal, so with hindsight I might have lightly stained it too before Tru-oiling, maybe I'll do that on my next guitar.

The neck is really good straight out of the box. I was very impressed - unlike the body it is already nicely finished and silky smooth. I did paint the headstock black and lacquer it, which makes it look much nicer. I also gave the frets some attention, levelling and polishing. I always fret polish new guitars, makes them feel smoother for string bending. I also adjusted the truss rod, which was a little out. The nut looked like it might be an issue, the slots were wide and not cut very deep, but after assembly it doesn't seem to cause any problems.

It took me a couple of weeks to prep the body and neck. It was then that I picked up the manual...

Assembling the guitar took two or three hours. The neck fitted the body absolutely perfectly, no need to adjust. As others have noted, the instructions on fitting the pots are terrible, impossible to make out from the photo which way around they go, I was lucky to get it mostly right first time but the pickup selector switch I put in upside down but easy to correct. When I got to fitting the pickups it all became clearer which way the pots should go - maybe I should have read forward in the instructions first.

It was not clear which screws to use for which purpose - some were longer than others - although not a major problem I ended up with long screws for the truss rod cover and I actually think they were the wrong ones so I'm just going to find some spare small ones and use those.

Once stringed up it all looked really good. Everything lined up well, I adjusted the action and as soon as I played without going through an amp I was really impressed - it sounded really nice and resonant. It actually felt like a good guitar, which was a huge relief! I then plugged it in to my amp and again I was really impressed with how nice it sounded without much adjustment - I haven't yet fine tuned the setup such as intonation and pickup height and I'm not even sure I need to.

In summary, I really enjoyed this project and am delighted with the results. There were no significant issues at all with the kit I received, everything fitted well and worked. I definitely recommend these kits - for the money they really are excellent and overall exceeded my expectations. For that reason I have given it a 5 star review.

I did have an Epiphone SG a few years ago - to be honest I prefer the HB kit. I might even upgrade some of the components over time.

Pros:

Really fun and rewarding project

Great value

Everything fitted well and worked straight off

Cons:

Tuners do the job but some very stiff

Instructions for fitting potentiometers are vague

This might be a new addiction, I immediately want to buy more kits!!