Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit ST-Style Reviews

My first guitar!!!

I bought this kit because i wanted to do my very own electric guitar and being a ST-style fan i decided to go ahead and buy it. The first things that i noticed when I opened the kit was the wood, the body of the guitar, which seemed kind of those vintage guitar bodies, and that one of the tremolo springs was broken. So, about the wood and the body i was very surprised because it seem to be a very good wood to paint and varnish. And it was. On the other hand, the spring was broken and it got me a little worried, because i didn't knew if only two springs would do the job, so i put those parts all together and, for now, they are doing allright. About the electrical parts, they are very easy to put together and they sound fine. Actully, for me it ended to be a very good guitar.

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 Bang For Your Buck

This was my first guitar and I was sceptical about how good a Guitar as cheap as this one would be, but it exceeded all my expectations and was totally worth it. The wood and parts were all not high-end as you may expect, but in my latest build I spent way more money on just the body, so I think this is definitely the best option you could take to get the most out of your money.

My own design.

I really like the Statocaster body shape but did not want to build a Stratocaster! I carefully looked over the body to see what could be done. Mine came in 3 pieces of basswood, light yet resonant. Two parts had good grain match, the last piece was not- a solid finish it had to be. I sanded the cut contours to a deeper finish (forearm arm and rib-cage contours) and routed the pick up cavities to accept any pick up. I then decided to mount all the pu's at an angle, like the bridge pu.

I then designed a 3-piece mounting pick guard without the typically Fender jack socket plate to be a simple flat surface mount and rearranged the switch and control knob positions.

The headstock shape was next. After many drawings and a look on the net to see if I'd by accident copied any other design, I cut the profile. Also rounded the neck to headstock profile. Finished with amber tint cellulose it turned out very well. The maple even had some birdseye figuring! Frets polished and rosewood board oiled.

Now the hard and expensive part - how to finish the body? I went for midnight blue boat enamel thinned down and using a good brush...allright from a foot or more. Cellulose lacquer is expensive with additional postage charges and hard to get. It is also soft and on basswood will dent and scratch very easily.

The tremello bridge and tuners passed my 'fit for purpose' inspection and went on the guitar...stays in tune alright but both feel seem a little stiff when operating. Live with it. Pick ups are ceramic flat plate types under non magnetic polepieces and sound like an electric guitar! I am not a "tone" obsessive person. A magnetic field is just a magnetic field! In fact your strings are more important for a good tone. The magnets simply impart a weak magnetism within steel/nickel strings and then the strings vibrate...the moving field intersects the coil windings and that, folks, is the induced signal sent to the amp!

To conclude - I built the kit to look as different as a Strat could possibly be from parts that pass muster. The best thing is that the neck fitted the pocket nice and tight and the resulting combination resonates nicely with reasonable sustain and " twangy-ness"! Pleased by the result...

Very easy build

It's true. This was a very easy build. Almost plug and play, well not quite. The body was ready to be painted although I decided to keep it a natural colour and jus t wax it.mthe result was excellent.

Wiring was easy as this was all done for me, all I had to do was bolt the electronics into the housing. Likewise the neck simply bolted in place.

I know very little about building a guitar and I understand that using copper to shield the pickups is a normal thing. But that was not required here.

There were plenty of videos around showing how to set up intonation and and other adjustments. I must admit I didn't need to muck around to much and as soon as I plugged it in the sound was great. The action was a little high at first go but I soon sorted that and now I have a great sounding guitar.??

Great value kit

This was the first DIY kit I have made and I would not hesitate to buy another HB kit.

The quality of the kit is very good. The neck and body were excellent quality and fit together perfectly without any need for adjustment or shim. I brought this kit as a platform to make my own partscaster. I replaced the pickups, pots and tuners and now have a guitar that sounds much better than the money spent on it.

Overall a great kit, and a lot of fun to build.

Better than expected

When you order a guitar kit you do not expect the resulting guitar to be comparable to a highend product and of course that is also the case with the Harley Benton ST kit.

I bought the guitar to acquaint myself with the mechanisms of an electric guitar such as the bridge and how to set intonation, truss rod to set the action and finally the electronics. To that end this kit is perfect.

What I didn't expect was that the result is an utterly playable strat copy with a lovely neck and reasonable tone. It will not compare to a proper fender but for my purposes it fits the bill.

Present for someone

This went down a treat at Christmas, not only was it a fun project but plays and feels like a guitar you would try and buy in a shop. Pickups are dead on, all round great purchase

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.

Decent quality kit

I bought this as a 3rd guitar project. There was a screw missing for the bolt on neck and the nut on one of the tuners didn't screw on so I quick fixed it by filing down the thread. Frets needed redressing as there was random buzzing (uneven frets) that's all that was wrong which I found easy to fix. It's the first guitar that I ever fret dressed and no the action is lower than my squier or lp. Now it plays well and I've put new pickups on it so I can't comment on the stock pickups. Overall the quality is good

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.

Overall I was very pleased with this little kit. Firstly the delivery was outstanding! perfect tracking and arrived in 3 days, very much impressed! The kit itself is rather good too, now I'm no guitar expert but i personally think it's really good for a starter guitar and project, not really a professional level guitar without maybe some alterations, Myself, I bought some alternative parts, mostly cosmetics like scratch plates, dials, pickup covers etc... i did replace the string trees too since I have seen many a guitar critic/expert state that these types aren't particularly good for string life since they drag on the strings. My only real gripe with this kit is the fact that the heel of the neck was uneven so when it sat in the neck pocket of the guitar, one side was sitting fine but the other side was floating about 1.5 mm from the body in one corner and also I was missing 2 screws for the jack socket, but those were easily replaced. there was also a tiny crack in the body of the guitar, but that sort of thing was easily fixed with some filler. really I was very happy with it overall, and am considering maybe getting another one, different body type though, since i had so much fun with building this one.

Good

I saw many bad kits that cost more than this with lower quality.

4 piece body, nice cutted and shaped, correctly drilled. I ordered 2 of these kits, one of this come with very beautiful flame maple neck, I was shocked. Fretwork as expected poor, but anyway I will refret this and change nut. You can leave the parts that don't affect on sound, but other parts (pickups, electronics, tuners and bridge) should be replaced if you want decent sounding and playing guitar.

ST Kit

Well never mind buying a Squire Strat...the quality of this kit is unbelievable.

An hour to build and 30 mins to tweak, tune, stretch and final adjustment..

The supplied pickup set is not bad at all but being ceramic lack bell like tones, I didnt use the supplied strings but fitted some Ernie Ball Slinky 9's

Retro fitting a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails in the bridge and the playability and sound this kit guitar produces is better than most Squire and Mexican Fenders.

The Neck is very well fretted, no choking or raised frets and the whole kit just fell together to produce a serious players instrument.

Unbeatable for the cost..

Next step now is to carve the Headstock shape and laquer the body, again the quality of the Basswood body means a natural finish is possible, there are no unsightly joins or blemishes to hide.

And fit a Roland GK2a pickup system.

My only gripe is that there were a few screws short and the one string tree screw is not long enough, but I never use the rear cover plate or D/G string tree on Strats anyway.

Excellent and great fun for those that like Lego...

Great for a first try!

Very interesting thing, I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to try to work on their first custom guitar.

Some minor issues though:

- one screw for the spring bracket wasn't really a screw, but more a bent nail. Easy to replace of course.

- the little screws for the string tees on the headstock are rubbish (or the pre-drilled hole was drilled too big). Whatever it was, the screws jumped out of the holes within just minutes, because of the string tension.

- it claims to be "paint ready", but sand it anyway. My first layer of spray paint was terrible. Don't know if it was because of my very limited painting abilities or the wood finish, but after i sanded it, everything went much much smoother.

- a little bit more advice on how to install and adjust the hardware like tremolo bar, pickup height, truss rod, ... would be welcome. As a beginner you will need to find helpful advice from others (or the internet), because the manual is very limited in that.

But those were really the only issues I encoutered.

It's not a fantastic sounding guitar, of course. But for the small amount of money it costs, it's an INCREDIBLY awesome portal to a new world of guitar customizing. It's perfect for everybody who wants to try it, but is a little unsure to start.

And to prove it's not a throw-away thing: i'm going to play it on the closing ceremony of the Special Olympics in Antwerp, 20/9/2014

HB Strat Kit

Very good kit, once assembled, plays lovely, sounds like an authentic strat. I looked at squire and fender strats and to be fair, all the specs right up to about £250 were basewood bodies. I bought this kit with the intention of changing pick ups etc etc....didn't have to, I basically painted it then rubbed it down and trashed it. when people see it the ask if I have a

Rory Gallagher Strat.....Fantastic value for money

Nice kit.

I purchased this kit for a student and it was a great way for the to learn how a guitar goes together and understand an instrument more. The end product was not too bad either, much better than your average first electric guitar. I think it helps that you can tweak the instrument to how you like it as you construct it.

Overall decent quality piece of kit that is ideal for a beginner.

your cheap custom guitar!

I bought this kit to make an decoupage experiment, without spend too much.

Open the box the woods looks good , the shape is perfect and the basswood weight is comfortable (but also tender, may be dented easily, so cover it with several layers of paint!).

The neck is ok, you have just to design your own headstock shape (please quit copying the fender one and create your own!!!)

you dont need to solder because the electronic part is very simple, just connect wires with connectors.

I replace the bridge and neck pickup, the cheap plastic capo with a bone one, straplocks and tremolo saddles.

After some time i also replace the tuners with locking tuners for a better tuning and also the strings with daddario.

also oiled all the fretboard and the wood return to life!

the decoupage and the 8 paint hands fixed very well to the body and headstock surface.

At the end of all the guitar looks and play very well, the feeling is good, non buzz, great tone and the improvements raise the guitar level from cheap guitar to useful live axe.

with few bucks you'll get a personal customized guitar thats play well and a lot of fun.

just think at least to replace the cheap capo

Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit

Easily assembled and has good furniture. The tremolo is a bit tough to set up properly, so patience is required. In use, it gives good reponse from all 3 pickups, and not to heavy in weight.

Good value