Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit ST-Style Reviews

I made this as part of the 2022 DIY Kit Challenge. For a long time I've wanted a vibrant pink guitar, but those are hard to find at any budget so I used this to make my own. Overall, the quality of the parts in my kit were excellent. After finishing the kit and doing a setup, I'm really impressed with the sound. The neck in particular was excellent. The headstock is very difficult to cut if you don't have a proper woodworking setup, but I do really appreciate being able to customise it to my own tastes. The instruction manual isn't great, but there are a lot of excellent online tutorials that you can follow.

Changes that I had to make:

* I had to realign some of the pick guard pilot holes.

* Cleaned up some oxidisation on the frets and polished them up.

* The fretboard was pretty dry, so I cleaned and oiled it with fretboard conditioner.

Changes that I plan to make in the near future:

The tuners are very basic, and I plan to upgrade them to vintage style ones soon.

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really it is the best ST style kit every and it sounds awesome!

UPDATE!!! Still a fucking amazing guitar.

Fantastic Strat if you put in the effort and have the knowledge

I'll start with saying that I originally gave this 1 star and was very disappointed in the kit due to a few issues I had such as the tuners screw breaking off in the headstock or the springs claw bending to the springs pressure or the holes for the bridges screws being asymmetrical.

The thing is that you're buying an extremely cheap kit that has DIY in the title and due to it being a strat which is an extremely customizable guitar you can fix basically anything with enough time, effort, and most importantly knowledge.

I had a ton of issues and had no prior experience with any of this and barely knew how to even setup my own guitar but I used the help of people online in woodworking communities and guitar communities and personal friends and managed to overcome all the obstacles and the result is honestly pretty amazing! A nearly fully functional stratocaster that rivals and even beats the ones that are 100-150$, especially if you hit it with a few small upgrades like locking tuners, and a proper setup and fret levelling (though I didn't really have any major issues with the frets other than the 17th and 19th). Be prepared to put in time and effort but also be prepared for a fantastic fun and usable guitar that I personally will be using often and am proud to look at.

(RATING EXPLANATION: )

If being honest I'm not sure this guitar deserves a 5 star rating simply due to the mess I had to deal with (things that should be prevented in QC). The thing is that the more I play on this the more I enjoy it, It sounds surprisingly excellent and I managed to set it up with pretty low action with only some issues that still render it playable to a certain degree. The rating may not be accurate to the quality of the parts but the resulting guitar with all the work put in is definitely worth 5 stars. A custom strat thats fit for you perfectly and that you design yourself, absolutely amazing for the price!

A fun that you wish to have everyday

Not just playing, but building up this guitar its a very great and relaxing experience that you are going to love it and do it again.. and again ... and then you are going to wish all the DIY kits that they have. And talking about the quality of the guitar, I am sure that you are not going to buy better guitar for this price and have fun as you would have with this one.. no matter is it a t-style or st-style or whatever else, they are all very good and everyone have its originality. So try it, make your ideas and dreams true or have a nice time building it with your friends...... btw every part on this guitar its from excellent quality (pot's, magnets, frets, wood, etc etc ....You have to try it :)

Blank Canvas

Cons: Very bland pickups, just couldn't cut through with my band. Fine for practice and learning.

Pros: Simple and complete kit. Excellent neck. Fretwork level and even. Tight neck pocket. Functional hardware.

Blank canvas for self expression. Paint the body (or sand down the coating and stain it) and design a unique headstock shape. Or you could find a Fender headstock to copy and cut yours to shape like 99.9% of us.

Good DIY guitar for a start

First time putting all of the guitar parts together - good fun, parts are of good quality and sound is on nice level for this price. Putting guitar together took around hour, regulating - much more of course but great as practice. I recommend it!

Nice base for a starter custom guitar

It is a nice product for a starter guitar, but the quality of some components leaves much to be desired.

I assembled mine a year ago. The result was a nice average starter guitar, nothing outrstanding, but good one. Since then I've customized the guitar a lot: replaced the tremolo with a 2-point Wilkinson, installed locking machine heads and replaces pickups.

After a year of ruthless exploitation the tone potentiometer started to scratch, and 5-way switch stopped working in 2nd position.

So if you plan to customize your guitar with aftermarket parts, I can definitely recommend this kit. If you plan to make this your one and only guitar with the stock kit components - think twice.

A nice kit, but...

Its a really nice kit to play with, i had a fun time making my first diy guitar and it turnes out great. The only downside of the kit is that its precoated with something that you have to sand it down, what takes a lot of time and effort.

the thing is simply great

this guitar kit is really good and for its prices its wrong not to go with it, it sounds great plays great all thing arrived no missing items

Excellent

I bought this kit as a base for a strat build that I did. It came very well packaged and in good condition. As for the kit itself:

Body: 3 pieces of basswood glued together, presanded and ready to paint, with all holes predrilled. Perfect for those who want to put the guitar together as it is. The only flaw that I could find was a hole being just a little off, to the point it is almost unnoticeable, but that is only for the eye of the perfectionist. A very good job. If I would change something, it would be the routing, going for HSS or HSH, instead of the SSS, just to make things easier for us little humbucker loving fellas. 😊

Neck: Straight, no fret sprout, the fretwork was overall good, the frets were leveled and crowned. The only thing I had to do was shape the headstock up and polish the frets. I did change the nut, not because the original one was unfit for the job, I just wanted a tusq nut. In all honesty, I believe that the neck is the strongest point of this kit.

Electronics: From what I saw, everything was decent. Clean wiring job, nice soldering points and it was overall a better wiring job than others I have seen on guitars 4 and 5 times the price. Soundwise, I cannot say anything, as I do my own wiring on every guitar that I have, this kit included. Extra points for making it easy for beginners, as the kit's original electronics do not need any soldering.

Hardware: Even though I did not use any of the hardware, I could tell that the quality for the price is unbeatable. Very good for a decent playing guitar, great for beginners and intermediate players. The tuners were not stiff at all, the tremolo is the classic 6-screw trem and it can be upgraded in the future for little money, for those who do not wish to replace it. Everything though is a good starting point for a decent instrument.

To summarise, great body, excellent neck, good electronics and decent hardware. All in all this kit is amazing. I totally recommend it to beginner and seasoned builders alike.

Very Good Project

What can i say. Its a guitar although it has its ups and downs.

The overall quality of the body and neck are good which is what matters on a kit. The pickups are alright but nothing spectacular the bridge and tuners are alright and hold tune but you ideally want to replace them in the long run. The neck weighs more than the body which leads to neck dive. Overall good quality on what matters most good first guitar and even better if you want a project or just a budget bare wood guitar or if you want a custom colour. Would recommend to a tinkerer or a beginner or an experienced player who wants something different.

very good

my son loved doing this as his project

Overall I'm happy with the purchase

The guitar is decent. The only thing I would like to change (and I have changed) is the tuners. Pick-ups are OK, the neck is good, the frets are not polished but for this money it's OK. I really loved painting and assembling and setting up the guitar. It was fun and a great experience.

Nice way to practice building own guitars

All the parts on the set are quite cheap build and you can feel it in the end result, but if you’re not planning to record yourself playing or play live shows its more than enough

Basic Construction Kit

This kit includes just about everything that you need to build your own "Stratocaster" copy guitar. Although the body and neck manufacturing quality and woods are good, be aware that some (most) of the components & accessories are of low quality. The are absolutely basic to get you going. In case you need it for a nice base to build your own guitar you will have to upgrade most of the components, such as pickups, keys, tremolo bridge.. BUT cannot complain for the price - this is what you get for a fraction of the price of a finished guitar.

Great sounding strat

The Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit ST-Style is quite easy to put together if you are not bothewred about painting/sanding/staining, it does require some knowledge of setting a giutar up and may need the fret board levelling so would recomend getting a kit to do so. The strings are cheap and need replacing bnefore oyu sting the guitar. Once it is all up and running its a great sounding guitar that I wouild recomend to anyone who wants to have a go at building your own Strat.

If you want to stain or paint it then thats when your work is going to be much harder.. enjoy...

HB Kit Guitar

I've had other kit guitars that cost a lot more. The quality of this is excellent. We made a fretless guitar with this for an experiment. Worked out ok.

Nice DIY kit

I purchased two of these kits for my kids. We built them together. All parts were included and build quality was ok. All frets were too long and super sharp. A little sanding was required before painting. The overall sound was good enough for my kids. They love their own guitars.

Came in with 0 expectations and I was still disappointed

Expected to get a guitar that I could throw some stain on screw it together and not worry about. The body was treated with something which was....annoying but whatever cause it meant I had to sand it. The main problem was the screws that came with the kit, they were dirt cheap and snapped and stripped like they got paid to do so. The guitar is just not worth the hassle to fix the stuff. The quality on these kits seem to be all over the place. I would ask for my money back if I thought it was possible.

Some issues

This is a great kit, but as many has said... the holes for the tremolo was not straight, and that is a problem. I would give this 5 stars if the holes were straight, because you get a lot of good guitar for the money in this kit!