Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit T-Style 4-stars Reviews

Pleasant surprize

Bought this as an experiment in guitar building and finishing.

Everything was in the box to build what has turned out to be a very respectable Telecaster copy for just over £50 !!!!

Yes the electrics are a bit cheap , but all work fine and its very easy to upgrade any of the hardware should you so wish.

I was very pleased with the body and the way it was finished from the factory. I just gave it a light sand and applied a few coats of Danish oil and it looks great.

The neck was a good fit although the finger board was very dry, again some lemon oil applied and it came up nice.

The frets on the whole were ok just a couple slightly high and were easy to correct. Had great fun designing and cutting the head-stock.

My one criticism /warning is the tops of the intonation

screws on the bridge are very sharp , you soon find this out if like me you tend to palm mute the strings . It was quite difficult to correct with a small needle file ,trying not to damage the slotted top.

Overall very pleased with the finished item , great way to practice setting up a guitar if you have not done it before as its so inexpensive. I even let my son adjust the truss rod something i would not let him touch on my Gibson Les Paul!!

Vraiment très surprenant pour un prix si bas!

Ce modèle est la première que j'achète. J'avais de gros doutes sur la qualité du manche. Dès l'ouverture du colis, j'ai été vraiment surpris : le corps n'est pas terrible mais la qualité du manche est assez remarquable (pour le prix, bien sûr ;) Tout le reste (accastillage, cordes, potards, ...) est de très mauvaise qualité mais fonctionne.

Le corps est déjà recouvert de bouche-pores si vous désirez le vernir directement. Le manche est lui déjà vernis (légèrement). Seule la tête n'est pas finie, ce qui permet de lui donner la forme finale que l'on veut.

Ce qui fait la force de ce produit, c'est qu'il vous permet deux possibilités : soit vous vernissez la bête, montez l'ensemble et vous vous contentez de ce que vous avez par rapport au montant investi ; soit vous vous retroussez les manches, investissez un peu plus et transformez cette guitare (en corrigeant aussi ses inévitables imperfections) en quelque chose de bien bien mieux, en fonction de vos compétences.

Je vous conseille le site de Crimson Guitars (aussi sur Youtube) car ils partent d'un modèle Télécaster comme celui-ci (mais d'une autre marque) et l'améliorent de façon incroyable. Inutile d'aller aussi loin qu'eux mais cela donne des idées!

Good starter guitar

As a complete guitar novice I decided to buy this as a project so at least I could have some immediate fun building it before the hard work of learning how to play set in.

It arrived very quickly in very good condition. Everything was as you would expect except two scratchplate screws were missing, although this was not the end of the world.

I sanded the body down, primed, painted and varnished it - all very easy to do and fun creating a design for the paintwork. The head was the hardest part to do, but nothing a jigsaw couldn't handle.

The instructions were helpful and made sense. All the parts fit together logically and well. Getting the action of the guitar right took time, but this is to be expected.

Playing wise - I am certainly no expert, but it has a good enough sound for me to learn on and record demos with. I am sure there are a lot better quality guitars out there, but for the price of this kit as a starter guitar I cannot fault it.

I would definitely recommend this pack to anyone who is thinking of starting out or wants a little building project.

Sounds good, fun to make. Some issues with holes off centre

Bought this is 2014, and had great fun coming up with a colour scheme to paint it, and deciding on carving a headstock shape.

All the pieces were there, electrics work fine, and I didn't need a solder to do anything, the circuits just clicked into each other. Not sure how this will affect my chance to add more wiring to it (I might add a killswitch soon), but it was easy to assemble.

The only issue I had was the bridge holes drilled were slightly angled, instead of being a perfectly horizontal line perpendicular with the string line: it was slightly off to one side. Thankfully the saddles are adjustable so it doesn't make a difference.

I sanded it, spray painted it, drew over it with a sharpie, which was really fun, then varnished it with spray.

Neck fits into the neck joint perfectly, screws in perfect alignment.

The only issue was that the screw holes for the pickguard didn't align with where the metal cover for the control knobs went, and i had to cut ~5mm from the pickguard for it to fit. It's only noticeable if you're looking for it though.

imgur.com/iaQZOAR for picture.

I have gigged with her numerous times and she sounds great on clean and with chorus-phase-compressor, though with lots of gain and distortion you get lots of feedback, more than desired (single coil pickups though, so you'd expect it).

Would definitely buy another kit if I wasn't poor.

Good..... Could Have been Great!

This is my first attempt at building my own Guitar the HB kit is an excellent kit if like me you are just starting out. Everything was well made and easy to fit with good instructions and it sounds good. My only complaint about it is there was no Jack plate, Neck Screws, Strap locks or Scratch Plate screws.Which is a lot to be missing I was anxious to get on with it so I bought them myself. Having to spend extra on these items was annoying.

value for money

a value for money product. a gift for friend who enjoyed it

a good place to start

This is a very easy kit to put together and was a fun introduction to kit building, I enjoyed the project and may well continue working on this kit to hone my finishing skills. Once it's put together it's very playable even if the sound doesn't blow me away.

A good start...

I sort of like the idea. Start with something cheap, see what it does and then upgrade at your heart's desire. I had the T-style guitar for more than three years now and I have to say that the guitar itself is very good. I think the neck is more comfortable than my Fender Strat, the body is really nice, since my very own spray can painting now begins to wear down and I get a nice "vintage" look.

The pick ups and the electronics are very basic and I have to admit that they are now replaced. But Hey! - I get a very good basic rock'n'roll/country/blues guitar for very Little Money.

Not bad.

First off the actual kit is fine and you get a lot for your money. Most of the work is already done for you so it's pretty easy to put together. I built a book case the same day as I built this and actually found putting the Guitar together easier and less stressful!

The assembly guide is a bit rubbish though.

The kit comes with a variety of screws but doesn't tell you which to use where. It just says something like "screw in the pickguard" - do I use the big screws, the little ones? The other little ones? Most of the parts were supposed to be individually wrapped and I think the screws were probably supposed to be wrapped up with their corresponding parts but the plastic bags in my kit had come open and a lot of the screws, washers and machine heads were floating around loose in the box.

It'd be really helpful for the instructions to give each screw type a letter and then eg tell you "screw down the pickguard with screws A".

The instructions tell you to screw in the string tree (singular) but the kit has two string trees with 2 different height spacers. Not very helpful. I was able to work it out by looking at some pics of Telecasters online.

These problems are insurmountable. I was still able to put it together fairly quickly but just a bit more care in the instructions would make this a fantastic product.

The actual parts are all fine. There not top of the range and I think I'll probably upgrade the tuners and pickups but they're definitely serviceable already. The neck is fine - the frets may need some attention (seems ok though), which is fine as it's an opportunity to learn. Honestly the body looks great. It's 3 parts but they're matched pretty well and the top looks quite nice.

I was planning on painting it but I quite like how it looks out of the box.

One common complaint I've read is that the pickguard screw holes don't match up with the holes on the body. Mine lined up pretty much spot on - infact everything lines up fine on it.

No holes drilled for the jack socket cover which is a bit annoying but not a huge deal.

The bridge is a 3 saddle one which makes correct intonation hard/impossible but isn't necessarily "bad" - a lot of telecaster fans prefer the sound of a 3 saddle bridge.

It cost less than £50 which for a guitar is nothing really so I'm very happy with it. I think it's a good kit to learn with and gives you an ok platform to upgrade.

Pretty good - quite fun weekend project.

I actually like the sound of this basswood based kit and the pickups while not top notch are pretty reasonable,

I spent quite a lot of time with mine cutting the headstock to Telecaster shape (and almost as much money on paint/lacquer) getting it to look quite professional.

A few niggles with cable routing holes not being drilled from neck pickup to control chamber and really poorly drilled machinehead mounting holes which were completely out of position for one machinehead that required filling and re-drilling.

Shame about having a top loading bridge and not through body string loading. Bridge is longer than standard Fender too so not straightforward to put a fender bridge on as the mounting holes will not align.

Nice cheap intro to kit guitars

Great for the price. Fretboard is good. Body is decent. I bought this as an intro to guitar finishing and from-scratch setups. Pleasantly surprising in terms of playability and sound (apart from the super bad bridge pickup).

Excellent value for Money

I'm very impressed with some aspects, less so with others, but overall this is superb value.

The impressive bits:

- The neck is really nicely done, fret edges are nicely rolled with no sharp edges.

- The body overall quality is good. It's a four-piece slab, put together well.

The not-so-good bits:

- My body had some very minor dents, which a bit of wood filler sorted.

- I had to expand the bridge pickup routing a little to get the bridge plate to sit right.

- Not all the screw holes are 100% accurate

- The supplied machine heads seem like the weakest part, lots of slop/backlash in the movement. I replaced these before fitting.

The jury's out on the pickups and the solderless wiring harness - I'm old fashioned I guess!

In all, though, I'd really recommend this as a good kit to enjoy finishing and assembling a guitar for the first time.

Decent, cheap, started kit for thpse who want tp experiment

I bought this kit to get started on building my own guitars. I have no previous knowledge of electronics etc so I thought this would be ideal.

First of all, let me point out that this is a cheap kit so don't expect £1000's worth of quality parts. Not going to happen. However you do get so nice budget parts to have a try with. You will also need to shape the headstock as it is a wedge shape in its original shape.

Once put together, it plays ok but does need some setting up etc but the instructions will show you how to do a basic job on that to start you off. I wouldn't bother with the free strings you get though. Put some decent ones on instead.

My "tele" now has a paisley pink finish and is ready for some new quality pickups etc to go in it.

Overall , its a good way to start you off. If you don't like the way it plays then you can get replacement parts of auction sites to sort most of those issues.

Pleased with the outcome.

Excellent value for money

I just bought this and I have to say that I put it together straight away just to make sure everything worked and to see how it sounds. I was amazed, for £60 it's fantastic, plays well sounds pretty good - i love it. Only downside is probably that the positioning of some of the screw holes is a bit dodgy but with a bit of jiggering this is not really an issue. Buy one, you won't regret it.

tele kit.

Body and neck very good. hardvare- not the best. Pu bad. in generel far over expected quality for the Money.

If you just asamble right from box, it will be a guitar slightly under medium. If you got skils and maby a little expiriens it CAN be a very god guitar.

A fully functioning guitar

This was my first a attemp to actually built a guitar, so I bought the cheapest kit i could find.

The building:

First at all you should try if the neck fits onto the body. At my set it didn't fit perfectly because the neck was i little bit to wide. But no problem, just a little bit of filling and sanding. The body is already prepared, so you can im paint it immediately. I didn't know that, so I also sanded it and prepared it with a filller coat. I used standard car spray cans for the painting. It's important to paint in thin layers and wait at least 12h between. If you want a really smooth surface you have to sand the body in between. At the and 4-5 layers of clear coat. The neck needs no painting or clear coat.

The rest of the assembly is easy, it's just screwing there is no soldering necessary.

The set up ( neck, bridge, string action) was not a big deal. Only the high e-string is a little bit near at the edge of the neck and the tie bars are very sharp. The filling takes a lot of time.

I don't know if the quality of the guitar kits differs, but I'm very happy with my self built guitar. The mechanics are surpringly god and also the pickups aren't that bad.

NB: The guitar weights about 3,6kg ( In my case with a lot of paint)

Surprisingly good

I bought this for my husband as a Christmas present and he has just finished putting it together. He changed the bridge plate for a string-through-body type and used a recessed jack socket but, other than that, all the components fitted together with no problems. He has made a few adjustments to the truss rod and intonation and was planning to level and dress the frets. In fact it plays really well as it is and he has left it to settle down for a while before he decides whether to level them or leave them as they are. Excellent value for money!

Not bad for a first kit guitar!

Features:

It has all of the parts needed to build the telecaster. A manual is included but it's pretty straight forward on how to build it.

Sound

The lipstick pickups at the neck position isn't amazing and lets the guitar down. The single coils at the bridge position is okay, perhaps a bit too "trebly".

Quality

The wood looks like basswood, which is fairly cheap but a lot of guitars is built from it. The pre-drilled screw holes are placed in relatively the correct positions, although some adjusting had to be made on mine.

It's not perfect, but at this price I was to expect that. It's still a fun build and a playable guitar!

Best for the buck!

Very well cut design, medium to good woods, sound is very good for the price! A good kit.

feedback

First of all let me state that I'm very happy with the products. Finally I get to build my dream guitars. Really impressed of the fine detail on the shapes (I didn't expect this kind of quality) Few suggestions though. The pre drilled holes for the screws don't match with scratch plates and bridges. Neck as well so I had to fill them and do new ones. Maybe you could improve on this since the measurements are very important for good tuning later. Instruction manual in english also please. Overall again... Really happy!