Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit Single Cut Reviews

Looks great

Bought for my teenage daughter she struggled to finish building this she was quite frustrated so she never got to play finished article unfortunately

Not so worth

The equipment is ok for its value but what is the worst part about it??

The instructions . They are terrible , confusing , pictures without colors and they are not helpfull at all..

Great product

I was very impressed with the wood that has been used for the body and the neck, with very little finishing needed on both, and the fit between neck and body needed no attention on the kit I received, I was thinking I would have to fill the grain on the guitar body for a paint finish but because off the great piece of wood used for the body I am now thinking of an high gloss oiled finish, the only slight criticism I have is the wires from the pickup switch should be colour coded for easer connection, instead of guessing what cable to connect together, as the ones used are all black or red.

build your dream guitar with this perfect kit!

absoluetly perfect kit. i modified this kit seymour duncan hot rodded set and more. finish is perfect. you can paint it what do you want. shipment is good fast. thats a best price&performance kit ever i seen. i like that much

Nice quality but ...

Three out of six ferrules were not included. The guitar switch was damaged. The quality of the guitar body and neck was good

Nice kit, would recommend

This was a nice kit to build and I would go for another one. Although, I had a few issues.

-Kit is pre-finished, needs to be sanded down before paint/stain is applied.

-One of the knobs was cracked in shipping. I was going to use a different set, but still, could be packaged better.

As for the finished instrument, seems fine to me. I'm an amateur and even I can tell it's improvement from "Student Series" guitars I used.

Not bad though cheap

I bought the kit out of my curiosity. Easy assembly. I made a transparent and satin finish. For an inexpensive kit, the result is satisfactory. Decent sound for cheap pickups, the wood is good and the adjustment was quite simple. Obviously I preferred to fit a good string set to test the quality of the instrument.

a very good product for anyone starting out making guitars or looking for materials to practice on at a low cost

Pros:

the craftsmanship was much better than I expected with a good fitting neck pocket and the neck was particularly impressive at this price point.

Cons:

the electronics aren't particularly great but that is too be expected for this price and are easily replaced at a later date.

Its a project

I bought this kit as a way to learn about guitar building and in general, have some fun. So here are my thoughts:

The body - quite soft wood. Cavities cut nicely, inside quite rough but its the inside so who cares.

The neck - suprisingly nice feeling maple neck. You will need a fret leveling. After a nice fret polish - really nice.

Hardware - Dump it. It is poor quality and honestly - barely usable

Electronics - again, dump them. You can keep the pots, they are half bad but the pickups are good for nothing.

In the end I built a nice guitar and used it more for experience and a funny memory rather than a serious instrument, so i suggest buying it only if you plan doing the same.

Great liitle kit

Firstly i didnt use the pickups in this kit so i cannot say the quality of the tone of those however its by far the best DIY kit ive purchased. The wood quality is perfect and easy to work with. The hardware is better than most other kits ive used and the feel of the guitar is great. Will easily buy again should i do another kit

Great value

Bought this as a present for my daughter, with her sister customising the body. Almost a shame to cover the body, as the wood is beautiful. Quality of finish is above what I expected - the frets didn't need filing for instance. Instructions are clear and assembly took about 2-3 hours. Highly recommend. A couple of suggestions. There was nothing on the wiring for the pick-up switch to show which way to connect it, so it took a loooong time of trial and error to get that right. The only quality disappointment was the plastic parts - the pick-guard especially, as this is so prominent (in the end I made a replacement from a tree in our garden). The pickup surrounds and the covers over the body cavities are also cheap and nasty, but that doesn't show so much so it's not such a big problem.

But these are minor niggles - this is a great value product, and sounds as good as my Epiphone LP, and plays just as well.

High quality of workmanship, I especially liked the neck (even for the cost of the whole set of such quality a neck cannot be bought). The store is super !!! Thanks !!!

Nice toy!

I would consider this product more as a toy rather than an instrument. Bought this as a birthday gift to my friend.

First of all, I was impressed that it produces usable sound! For sure, it is far from the sound of the professional instrument: poor low end, relatively bad sustain, etc. But for the money... I was really impressed.

As for the quality, do not expect much. My friend had to fight against this set. Not all parts fit perfectly, sometimes you have to make an adjustment. Be careful as not all parts are well polished, do not hurt yourself. Also, there were problems adjusting the action: the bridge was at the limit.

Pros:

- you can assemble your guitar;

- all the components are there;

- you can learn how to apply finish to the guitar;

- you can customise your finish and colour;

- you can have fun with your children;

- and it actually plays after assembling!

Cons:

- poor quality: not all parts fit well, my friend damaged a finger while assembling :) ;

- sound is way far from perfect;

- extremely difficult to setup the guitar nicely.

Good for DIY projects.

Built two of these and both have perfectly aligned body and neck.

Fretwork is ok. One kit however had a slightly popped up 19-th fret. So get ready to press, file or level them.

Overall it's a great kit for it's price and can be a good base for your project.

a very good starter kit

i bought this kit several years ago, and intended to delay the review as i wanted to see if this guitar can stand the test of time, and frequent use. so i indeed bought one, and then assembled it, and kept it in its default configuration, including the finish, since after assembly. played the guitar for years on a daily basis for hours.

okay, fast forward three years, and here's what's happened to it.

1. the frets wore out. i had to refret it using harder frets.

2. the neck bowed a bit. i was rather baffled by this because i was only using standard 10-46's. it was made more evident when i used 10-52's. so i adjusted the truss rod while there was tension on the strings, and that fixed it, but then it had a bit of back bow with the strings removed. i just surmised that probably the neck was too soft.

3. the pickups sounded muddier. this was, more or less, a perception issue, and only got resolved when i replaced them with stock epiphone pickups that i had on hand. not to say that the stock pickups were bad, but for me, i felt that they weren't good either.

4. bridge saddles wore out fairly quick. this must've been caused by my hands as they keep rubbing with the saddles as i do my palm muting. i swapped the entire bridge with an aftermarket roller bridge, and bought a harley benton tailpiece to complement it.

5. pots started becoming scratchy after a few months. since they became so, i chose to buy log pots and replaced the linear ones installed in the kit. i recycled the stock capacitor, but i also intend to replace that down the line.

6. stock tuners went all over the place. you can't make the guitar stay in tune for too long with the stock tuners. there were also dead spots when turning the pegs, and that greatly affected the tuning. i replaced them with an old set of taylor tuners that i had on hand, and that worked wonders on the tuning.

three years on, the guitar is still working, and is still in its default unfinished state. i've never laid any paint or refreshed the sealer on the wood, as i liked how it looked as a barely finished guitar. my hope is to see it work for more years to come, hopefully outliving me too.

to sum it up, it's a very good starter kit for those who want to learn how to build, play and maintain guitars. for those seeking something more robust or something that requires less maintenance, then this might not be for you.

Great starter guitar

I am amazed by the final product I got, when I sanded, colored the back with baiz and painted the front of the guitar. Great looking piece. The action is low, I am awaiting for the amp to come to me to test the sount of it also.

It is a good experience for anyone who wants to assemble a guitar. For value, I consider it an instrument that exceeds expectations.

Positive aspects: the neck is not that bad and the guitar looks very good.

Negative aspects: the electronics are of low quality. Only the middle module works.

Amazing!

I'm baffled by how amazing such a cheap guitar sounds and feels!

Love it

I really like it, good wood, easy to paint. Decent components. Can't say anything about the sound because I mounted the EMG pickups.

great guitar, fun to build

as a birthday gift for the two kids of my fiancée, i bought two LP style guitar kits. the way i finished and built the guitars would probably require as little as a few days to up to a week for one guitar, but i stretched out that period over about a year.

these kits are a great opportunity to own a personalized guitar for the lowest price possible. it is great fun to play your own build, made to your own preference. you just need some time, some inspiration and a bit of dedication. if you don’t want to customize the guitar you could even leave the guitar unfinished or just clear coat it so you could be done in a few hours. i kept the hardware stock on these guitars and used water based stain to color the guitars and finished them with gunstock oil. the only thing i recommend to upgrade are the tuners (and the strings). but the two guitars definitely turned out to our liking.

we live downtown and do not have much space to work on such projects, such as a balcony or extra room to spray paint the guitars or to keep the parts laying around. but as i made myself a Harley Benton ST style guitar a few years before and used staining and oiling as method for coloring and finishing that guitar, i knew how it could work if i could use the same technique on these two.

after sanding down the bodies and necks (they are prepared to be lacquered so needed to be stripped of that before using a different finish) i colored and oiled the wood. i used our kitchen table as workplace. the sanding is a bit of work and gives a lot of dust, but the result is great. one of the guitars is stained purely black, the second one fades from blue to yellow, which gives quite a great vintage effect. i didn’t sand down the second body and neck thoroughly enough the first time, so i had to redo that partly as the stain did not cover the wood well on all parts. that was a bit discouraging, but in the end it wasn’t that bad and actually this guitar turned out even better than i could imagine, even though it didn’t came out exactly as i planned. the hardest thing was to keep the binding on the body white. and even though i put some protective tape on it, after i removed it, i still had to scratch some stain of that got to the binding anyway.

assembling the guitars was quite easy and foolproof, even though sometimes you wonder if you should connect something to this or to that, it can not really go wrong and is quite interesting if you never knew how a guitar actually works.

remarkable fact is that the sound of the two guitars is quite different. they both have a clear lp style sound, but the one has a clearer and cleaner sound and the second has a warmer sound, a bit raw, like if the guitar has been drinking and smoking and living a rock and roll lifestyle for a few decades. it is an amazing sound, that makes me want to build a third one for myself, hoping that it will have the same voice. not sure if it are the pickups that are slightly different or the uniqueness of the wooden parts in the bodies and necks, but they really have quite a different sound.

the guitars were bought a few months apart and the second guitar came from a new batch, as they were sold out for a while in between. i guess you can not really predict how your guitar is going to sound exactly, but they both sound very well, especially if you consider the price.

pro’s

- good looking, classic lp style guitar

- cheap

- totally customizable in appearance

- interesting to build

- easy to assemble

- good sound

- scratchplate, etc also available in black (sold separately)

- complete

cons

- tuners work but are a bit wobbly

all together: these two guitar kits made me and their young owners filled with pride. finishing the guitar can be made as easy and fast or complicated and time consuming as you want, but should be quite manageable. it is not hard to assemble the guitar, and the results look and sound solid and good. recommended for anyone who dares to paint, lacquer or stain a bit of wood and knows how to handle a screwdriver. and of course for anyone who dreams about a personalized guitar and does not want to spend a fortune on it.