Harley Benton Ukulele DIY-Kit Sopran Reviews

No.

Just don't.

Nothing lines up or fits.

I've built musical instruments and thought I would show my brother how to make it

Didn't work out.

Ukulele DIY Kits

TY coordinator here from Ireland, We buy these every year for a cross curricular project for our TY students. Students, parents and teachers love them. Make them in construction, paint in art, learn to play in Music. Highly recommend!

Build it, play it!

I bought this kit for my young daughter. She has watched me build multiple guitars, and she is at an age now where I think she can start joining in on building instruments. A kit like this is perfect for anyone to start out with. Age doesn’t matter because you always want to start simple, and build up.

Pros:

1) price

2) at the end of the day, you’ll have a playable instrument

3) fun

The cons with my purchase

1) fretboard needed to be a bit wider

2) within a month, the string tension busted the wood where the bridge was. The glue didn’t come undone, the wood actually broke.

Having that happen briefly broke my daughters heart…but thankfully, her dad (me!) came to the rescue with some strong titebond wood glue, and some extra (reinforcement) wood to fix the problem.

Anyway…the guitar is now a beast. It’s strong and solid, and be of that, it sounds good. This is executed a kit like this is perfect for a beginning builder. If there isn’t any problems…great. If there is some problems…then for the price of the kit, it’s worth trying to fix and get more experience on.

Great Project and good instrument for starting Uke journey!

Very simple to build,so you can do it yourself or together with kids!

All parts are fitting great together and youcan comeup with your own design.

As a result you get a cute instument that plays and sounds well for the price. Great combo!

Great product

I assembled this with my 3 year old kid a it was amassing for him, and it sound very goo.

Excellent kit!

Brilliant kit, and everything fits together pretty well, you do need to do some fine tuning and have some equipment ready like clamps to clamp down the fingerboard and neck to the body, I'd recommend tite-bond resin glue (red label) to fit them together. It's worth the price as it just works.

There were a few minor issues, the fingerboard is slightly less wide than the neck, meaning you have to sand down the neck to make a nice fit. The dowels were relatively loose, but I guess this is to allow for tolerances, and once glued and clamped correctly it's fine.

My kids enjoyed decorating the ukeleles, over-all a good kit, turned out really well once finished with lacquer.

The sound though is rather weak, I think the strings with the kit are very low tension meaning they're quieter than you'd expect.

You get what you pay for...

Cheap instrument (i was aware of that before buy) that would leave more satisfied if the following were better.

1. Holes and dowels for mounting the neck to the body have a play.

2. Fretboard narrower than the neck. I was also expecting better quality for the fretboard and frets.

3. The body came with predrilled holes for mounting the bridge in a way that the bridge was not parallel to the nut.

4. The instructions for mounting the nut were a bit confusing since the line/point that separate the neck from headstock was diagonal.

The whole experience could be better with better quality control of the individual parts.

All in all, if you are looking for a cheap uke just buy a finished one.

If you are looking forward to the assembly, while being aware of the actual quality, then go ahead and buy

Very original product

Do not treat this product as a professional tool. This is more entertainment, very original. I bought this as a gift to a creative family, where mom is an artist, dad is a jack of all trades and a guitarist. And, of course, their son will enjoy the result of the joint work of the parents!

Had a fun time building and painting this. Maybe Im not a ukulele guy but the sound was ...boring

Rough instructions, can go wrong in many ways easy if you are unexperienced

Kind of dissapointed

I know it costs 20 euro but it had several issues. The holes to connect body and neck with the sticks(I don't know how these little wooden things are called :P) were close to 2mm wider and had fill them and redrill them(not an easy task considering you have to line up body and neck. The fretboard wood looked cheap and the frets were sharp and not even. Tuners and bridge had surprisingly no problem.

Concluding and I can't say I did not like the finished product or the process but you have to have some knowledge and several hours for this project.

Quite good for the price

Building it was quite easy and fun. One important thing - the instructions where to place bridge are not accurate enough, if you follow it it won't be in tune probably. I did simple trick - didn't glue fretboard but tried it first already with bridge in place, put strings on and moved fretboard and nut a bit until it was perfectly in tune, and glued it after that. Now it plays quite well.

Could be a great and creative toy for a kid and maybe a good starting point for learning Uke, but don't expect anything more.

Finished ukulele with painted body was a great gift for a six year old kid, so in the end I was satisfied with it, but quality was much lower than I expected. Body is made of the cheapest plywood with no binding and it is even held together by metal pins. Fretboard was cut askew at the nut (but luckily was possible to be sanded down without decreasing the length of the first fret too much) and it was nearly impossible to glue the neck straight to body. Nut and saddle are cheap plastic, strings in the kit are useless (with Aquila strings it sounded much better). Machine heads were nice and I liked the look of open gears.

I mean... it's 20¤!!

It's more than great for its price!

The kit includes everything, nice quality and the wood is a lot prettier than I expected!

It only needed a little shaping because the neck was a bit wider than the fretboard, but other than that you're good to go!

I will definitely buy more of these in the future!

Great project

As I am in the process of completing a Harley Benton guitar build, I thought it would be a fun project for my daughter to do her own Uke, and maybe this can create aspirations to learn.

At this price, there is little to say against this kit. It comes complete with all the bits and pieces required for the build.

I was afraid the neck itself has to be glued, but there is a wood tenon that goes into the body. The wood seems a bit light, but then again it's a Ukulele not a solid body guitar!

A fun project. So far so good with this Uke !

DO NOT BUY

1. Some parts are missing - for mounting the bridge.

2. Instructions are not very good.

3. Workmanship is bad - frets are rough and sharp. Wood has not been sanded.

4. The parts dont fit together! The fretboard is too narrow for the neck.

5. Very difficult to position the bridge without any reference marks. So you need good measuring tools.

I bought this for my 7 year old niece. She and her Dad were very excited but in the end it was impossible to assemble and she was very disappointed.

Fun little project but beware ...

This kit is a fun project but beware, unless I got a bad one you cannot just put the parts together and voilà as the manual says. You'll have to make sure all parts fit perfectly and probably make adjustments at the neck joint, bridge and nut to make sure things are really straight and have the proper height. This means you will have to know what you're doing and have some basic luthier notions and tools. Having said that the ukulele will look quite good if you use a nice color and lacquer, and the tuning machines and sound are not bad at all. It needs good strings. Don't panic if you have a lot of fret buzz after just putting the first strings on, it'll take a little while( with strings on) for the neck to get a little more relief and for the tuners to be stable.

Cheap and cheerful

Simple review. For a very cheap kit you end up with an ok Ukulele. Very simple to make, in fact it takes longer to paint and finish than it does to construct. Tunes ok but struggles to stay there after a little strum. Kids love it though.

All in all 7/10

I love this kit!

I bought one for my son to make as a little hobby, but it was so good that i bought one for my dad who actually plays uke. He also thought it was great.

A decent kit

I got this for my wife - she likes them, not sure why ..

Checking it on arrival, it was well packed and all parts were in correct shape. I bought a mandolin kit from the US a couple of years ago and it needed a lot of adjustment to get it to fit together. The Uke just went together like a dream.

It isn't solid wood and, so, doesn't have much real depth to the sound. Also, the top ply isn't all one piece - there is a join running across the waist. Thus, grain filler [at least] is needed and a solid colour has to be used.

However, the price indicates that it isn't the most serious of instruments ... suffice to say it is good fun in the making and the playing. If you like ukeles ..

Recommended.