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

Nice Kit, Good For Building Guitar Or For Parts

I bought it at the end of December, I actually wasn't looking another guitar or kit but wanted to pay 70 euro more for something I can sell or maybe even keep, and have free shipping, instead of paying 15 euro for shipping. I decided to have some fun with it, I'm still building custom Strat using that body, I put neck on different guitar and used pickups and other parts in other instruments. However it could be a great guitar on it's own, neck is really nice and comfortable, frets are good and ends aren't sharp, parts are good too, pickups sound ok and tuners could be better but they do the job, bridge block is thin but it doesn't look very fragile. Body is also nice, wound looks good even if not painted, however back cavity is routed in strange way, one side of it isn't totally straight, it's little bit wavy, it may look like a routing mistake, but I looked on previous years models and a l l bodies have back cavity routed like that, maybe it's mistake in file for CNC and it's too small to be needed to be fixed?

very good quality for the price, but wish it was routed for neck and bridge humbuckers

The basswood body is great and easy to sand down (there were some rough, uneven patches on the body, but it was good as a whole.) The non-solder feature is very helpful for quick and easy assembly, but I'm somewhat disappointed in the routing only being for single coil sized pickups, but I knew that when I bought the item. Overall worth the money and a great product.

Great fun and decent value .

I bought this kit for the experience of building a guitar. I have 2 Fender guitars a Mexican strat and a Japanese Mustang. My existing guitars were needing a little bit of maintenance and set up so this guitar was to be my guinea pig. The kit is fairly impressive upon removal from the box, everything is of a decent enough standard. I sanded it down and hand painted it with acrylic paint sanding between coats before a final coat of rustoleum clear coat and t-cut car polish. I built the guitar up and set it up with the help of various youtube vids. I was able to get a nice low action with no fret buzz. The only minor gripes I have are that the tuning machines have a few wee dead spots where you turn and nothing happens to the pitch but they stay pretty much in tune. I replaced the nut with a graph tech 42mm pt5000-00 nut which helps. I was able to get good intonation at the 12th fret and a very playable set up over all. The neck is initially pretty impressive but the fingerboard is a kind of matte material and feels very scratchy when bending notes. In conclusion I would highly recommend buying this kit for the experience of building your own guitar. I was planning to slowly upgrade this guitar over time with new locking tuners,pick ups and tremolo etc, but the scratchy feeling of the finger board has given me cause to rethink this as its never going to feel great (think Jaws blackboard scene and you'll get the idea)

Experience 10/10

Quality of wood 7/10

Quality of hardware 7/10.

p.s. 1x bridge/tremolo screw was missing from my kit so make sure you count the parts before cracking on with your build. All the best and good luck.

~EDIT. Polished the frets and this got rid of the scratchy fret board feeling. !st build inexperience.

A pretty decent guitar kit

Really well made, frets were almost perfect, very little flaws on the neck and body that are worth noting. Hardware is cheap, but easily replaceable. If you want a solid mod platform s style guitar with more customization options, this is the best way to go.

Nice guitar

Nice and easy building project. Gives you a good insight on the 'mechanics' of an electric guitar.

We used normal acrylic paint and finished it off with transparent finish.

The guitar feels fine, has a nice clean sound. Eay to adjust bridge and truss-rod.

Very pleased with it.

Can't go wrong

For the price can't go wrong with it as a second guitar, i wanted a ST style guitar with the wammy bar. For the price it's upgradable and lets you have a something with your own spin.

Strat Kit

Really enjoyed building this guitar for a friend... The strings supplied are really bad but the kit was good quality. I bought this kit after building a T style kit.

What you see is what you get

To me this was a learning experience. Building the thing was fun, although I did miss a few tools to do so at first. But Wanting to get the guitar built I just bought the right drill bits and all.

After redrilling some holes and finishing the entire guitar, I enjoyed it for a while. Although I did feel that the tremolo detuned it too much so I wanted to mod it with a Floyd Rose trem, but found out the wood was way to soft to do that. After the mod was made, sadly. I'd say, if you're interested in learning to build a guitar, this is an amazing start. Modding isn't recommended, but still a good investment in knowledge. Just do it.

Making sounds

Overall good quality, but some pre drilled holes are out by some way. Not a real problem but it's a silly mistake, anyway will re drill the holes and get the kit up and playing although I am using pribora voodoo pickups instead of the supplied kit and better quality pots and switches. Cant tell you what it sounds like yet so cant rate it.

Good project

The guitar is quite rough. There was a dent on the front face of the guitar. Also, there were a lot of machining marks. It took me 3-4 hours of hand sanding to remove the marks and the dent. The body wood is not matched. The middle peace is significantly darker than the other 2. After staining though the body turned out to be quite nice.

I the neck seems straight. The frets were level, but the frets were not finished well. some had protruding edges, others needed to be filed down.

The parts are nothing special, but for the price they are good.

Its a great project, especially if you would like to learn how to work on guitars as it is reasonably priced. If you want a bargain, but you value your time, then its better if you just get a good finished guitar.

I bought this a a summer project to learn how to level the frets without damaging any of my expensive guitars. I could not do this as it was already level, but I had fun completing the kit.

Best choise for someone who wants to experiment with the assembly and the setup of a guitar. Gives you a "stress free" freedom to mix things up and try different parts without having the fear of damaging an expensive instrument. Everything is operational out of the box, but trying different things is the way to find out what you really like. Worth mentioning is the fact that it took 8 days for the order to be delivered from the moment it was submited, which is very quick.

Not too bad

I Purchased this product because i was bored, and because I had to do some paint and dye testings on something that could be ruined without a problem.

At first sight it seemed all in order. the parts were counted, the holes were drilled right (on mine).

the body that would have been treated with only pore filler was quite rough and needed some serious sanding, and when i installed the neck to inspect the joint on the bolt-on, one of the drilled holes made the neck snap, so I had to glue that back.

Also, the working space on the blank headstock might need an extra cm to create that big strat head.

The quality of the parts was cheap, but okay, it costs 69 euros, so what did you expect? I threw away the bridge and neck pickup and got a Jailhouse Rail II (bridge) and a Texas loco (neck) from Iron Gear guitar pickups. that fixed a lot in versatility.

By all I would say this product is an awsome product for beginners, this lets them understand what it's all about, but to be a good product it needs better wood strength and a few stronger pickups to match more styles than just classical clean chord striking. If HB could provide these improvements for let's say .. 100 euro's for a set, that would be a nice beginners set.

Good Value

I bought this for the crack and to have another electric guitar handy.

Good Qualities: it has good sound; everything's very easy to assemble; it's price is very good considering the quality; and it's very handy to have a guitar like this lying around and so cheap.

Bad Qualities: some of the parts were quite stiff and the neck wasn't quite straight.

But hey, a few stiff parts and a slightly warped neck are worth it for something so cheap with good sound, which is very easy to personalize.

A fun kit for my adult son's birthday

The price was certainly cheap enough! I thought this would be a good gift for my son for his birthday.....and I was right! He was very happy to receive it. He didn't want to wait to paint or stain it, he just wanted to start building. It took him about 2 hours. It sounds and feels like a pretty decent guitar! Does it play like a $1,500 Strat? No. But for $62 you just can't beat it. It does play pretty nicely and its feel and tone are also good. It has been 6 months now and this guitar is his favorite out of the two he owns.

Would I recommend this? Yes. If you're looking for a PRS then this one might not be for you. And I might not play this at a gig, but if you want a fun kit that will result a very inexpensive guitar that is fun to play, then get it. I would especially get this for a kid who wants to learn the guitar!

fun fun fun and good at the same time

someone said that a panda gives more satisfaction than a merc!

product is good !!

did not expect much, but it's really fun to build and paint it, there is only that main issue of sawing the headstock in shape, but if you got the tools, online you can find 1:1 shapes that you can print out and recreate.

the fact that you can correct possible faults before the final assembly yourself, gives you a lot of options to detail and finishing. it needs a little care here and there. mine needed some adjusting between neck and pick-plate, and then of course you need to check tutorials of how to properly tune (12th fret, action, truss rod), but that is part of the game and fun.

i spraypainted mine in black and then sandpapered it off a little for that used look. it's very inspiring, good for classic little dirty rockn'roll.

it's very good also to understand how to customize your gear, PRIOR to ruin the 'good' gear.

don't expect a vintage tele '59 worth 10k$, but does a good job.

i wish they would make explorers, too or flying V's withtout pickplate...

Agreat guitar kit for a very affordable price

I brought this as a project and I was blown away at the quality of the product! For the price you pay, you get the neck and body pre made, hardware and pickups mounted to the pickguard. The instructions are very easy to use and feature simple step by step diagrams. The only problem I had was that at the sides of the fret board at the 1st,2nd and 3rd frets there as scuffs but overall not a bad product at all.

Decent guitar

All in all it is pretty nice guitar with a suprisingly nice sound. It us easy to asemble and you dont need to be guitar tech to put it together.

Great value, good fun to build, looks great and sounds okay too

This is my second kit - I have already built the telecaster kit and am very pleased with it.

I have cut the headstock into a fender shape and painted and lacquered the body to make it look more appealing.

Wood seems to be reasonable quality basswood and didn't take much preparation before painting - just a little sanding and extra sanding sealer before using nitrocellulose primer and lacquer.

All in all a couple of weeks of work most of which is letting paint dry.

Great quality

This guitar is great value for money. If you are looking for a wood work project then this guitar isn't for you. I have no woodwork experience at all, I got it and put it together straight away. It only took about 4 or 5 hours. The wiring is simple. I think it sounds really well for a guitar of this price. I bought a Cort guitar previous to this one and I think this sounds much warmer. The two tone knobs help to get the right tone. With this guitar there's bass, middle and treble. If you are a beginner this guitar is great for you because it's so cheap.

This is my third kit from Harley Benton.The quality is excellent.

You pay 50-60 pounds and with a bit of hard work you have an instrument worth 5 times the amount....plus lots of fun constructing it.The body comes sealed/primed which gives a good foundation for painting.

Any issues with the kit Harley Benton is very supportive.

If you are willing the spend a little extra on a set of improved pickups it is worth the cost.I am yet to start on this project but checking the contents i would give it top marks.Looking forwards working on the Strat.

Highly recommended.