Harley Benton T-style Kit - Review
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2018
- ►►Download My Jam Tracks, Lessons and more here: www.catpickstudios.com
Harley Benton T-style kit is a fun thing to put together and the end result is an actually playable guitar. I was very positively surprised by it.
Harley Benton T-style Kit
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Your neck is just out of alignment. No need to move the bridge. Loosen the four middle string's to floppy, and the two E strings so they're just taught. Then loosen the neck bolts a turn or so, pull the neck where you need it to be, tighten the bolts, tune it up, and you're good to go.
Damn I completely forgot this trick. Thank you so much, I'll do exactly that!
@@CatPickStudios You can also check if the intonation is correct
It could also be the bridge saddles that are a bit offset. In telecasters they arent fixed. Loosening the strings and adjusting the saddles manually can fix it.
Love the headstock design. I’m stealing it for all my new builds. Plenty of room for Artwork on there!
Haha I agree, you could have a comic strip or two there.
Good vid and very cool shirt Vlad!!
Haha thanks! Those shirts are available btw, there's a link in the description to get yours if you're interested :)
What should I do with this guitar? Go heavy metal with it, make it a vintage style thing or something else?
Seriously...£70 Thomann .Took my time to shape the headstock, sanded it, applied five layers of wood dye (purple) three layers of Tru Oil....kept all the thomann bits...once it was set up tonally it plays really well....its a kit guitar buy one and have some fun building it..thats what these things are all about.
Sounds great! I haven't had the time to work on the headstock yet, but I will do that pretty soon!
I have bought one two weeks ago. Doing some training for tools next friday,, and l don't have the proper tools neither. Will do the headstock at that moment...am impatient to build it completely. The body is mounted, next weekend l will have my tele haha. Had some issues with the knobplate, seems the pu selector plate must be mounted at the backend of the guitar...but with a little push i managed to put it in the normal way, don't know yet if l will not have soundproblems...
@@CatPickStudios voilà it is completely done. When i put on the first bottom e string, it wouldn't stay in the nut, aaaarrrgggghhhh...but wit the 6 strings on the neck and turned to the inside for tuning the strings, everythi g is ok now, had some fine tuning of the neck and bridge to do, seems ok now. Sounds ok, the neck though is really flat, don't lî it too much, but hey 80€ and some sweat haha. Was much fun!!!!
This gives me hope for my telekit. It's not a HB, but I bought it off ebay for cheap and convinced myself it was just an "art project" so I wouldn't expect it to play well. Now I need to install the neck.
I had no expectations for this kit so I was really positively surprised how good it turned out to be. Good luck with your project too, hope it turns out well!
@@CatPickStudios thanks! 😁👍 the group build was such a hilarious idea. So clever !
Thanks! We are actually planning to do more of these in the near future!
@@CatPickStudios awesome!! Quality entertainment!
@@CatPickStudios hahaha the same morbid reason people watch tightrope acts and nascar....maybe someone will die!
Thx for the video, what about the dimensions, are they similar to Fender Tele? How does the neck go in the pocket?
I think the body was slightly thicker than on a Fender, but I'm not 100% sure as my own tele is self-made and it might be slightly thinnner than Fender's.
I've had several HB kit guitars and all of them have had a very decently made neck pocket. I guess the best way to describe it is that I haven't had to think about it, which is always good.
Thanks for the review! Do you think I coils grind off a bit of the back? So it’s lighter?
If you want it lighter you could do a tummy cut on the back, that would reduce the weight by 10-20% easily. You can't sand the whole back evenly though, because it will affect the neck attachment. :)
@@CatPickStudios Ah yes! Okay I will see how heavy it actually is and maybe try that (when it finally arrives ☺️)! Thank you!
I just bought this kit and like you I'm utterly impressed by it. It's not good for it's price, it's really decent guitar.
Yeah it’s a great kit, I still can’t believe it was playable right away. I mean it’s under 100 euros.
@@CatPickStudios The irony of it is that the less curved fretboard actually suits my hand better than the one on my expensive Gibson SG :D
@@CatPickStudios I've decided to give their single cut model and the jazz bass a chance, too.
Let me know how those are!
@@CatPickStudios I'll make sure to do that! I'm getting one of them next month but I don't which one yet because I can't decide so I'm having a friend decide for me :D
I tried to draw up a shape on the headstock of mine, but did it over several times. The pencil eraser has polished the satin finish, so that it has become glossy only in that area. So yeah, it can also be used for that it seems 😆
Haha maybe I need to try that for some local polishing!
@@CatPickStudios 😂
Hey can I buy this kit and replace the tuners and the pickups from fender?
Yeah absolutely.
Is the body thickness equal to the other tele? Or is it thinner?
Hmm the HB has been at my cousin’s place for at least a year now so I can’t do a comparison. But from what I remember the HB might have been slightly thicker. That could be due to the fact I sanded my self made Tele’s body a bit too thin. It was my first ever build, so… 😅
Before the comparison I was like "this sounds really good. Especially for that price". Then after the comparison I can clearly tell that the other one sounds better in terms of being more full, louder and have slightly more tops. Don't know if the tone and gain control are set on the best sounding positions on the Harley Benton?
But as a beginner the HB is probably perfectly fine for me.
Pickups are most likely the cause, a nice set of wilkinsons tele pickups should brighten it up.
@@hussamjamil4980 this is a couple years ago now, but I actually I really like the sound of the pickups in me HB TE-20 :) I've had a couple of classic vibes, but I still prefer the TE-20, because the bridge has a rounder sound (transients) and more full on the low mids. The CV's I had was i little to harsh and nasal sounding on the bridge. Prefered the mid position on those.
I even watched a comparison between the TE-20 and some Fender American Tele, where I also prefered the darker/rounder/fuller sound of the HB.
It's odd, because I do like a good surfy sound, and for that you'd need a more bright and twangy sound on the bridge (and be playing closer to the bridge of course). But I guess I lean more towards the spaghetti western and swamp blues kind kind of sound, which doesn't mind darker or lower tuned guitars (like baritones or a Bass Six).
But it's funny, because most of sounds in those spaghetti westerns aren't even guitar sounds. And those sounds that are, weren't all coming from an electric one. Some people think that baritones were used. But I think that it was a Bass Six for the lower and more subtle notes, and then just a Strat for the licks, if I remember correctly from my research 🤔
It's funny how the baritone have become what we associate with spaghetti.
Also, even though a lot of surf guitarists have been and is using Jazzmasters and Jags, it's on the strat that it all got started by Dick Dale.
I also had a HB JA-60, and it's a little darker than the TE-20. I've seen people here on UA-cam changing out the pots to let more highs through, but actually I think it becomes too harsh and looses some of its fullness in the lower frequencies. I prefered the sound without the mod in those vids. And when I had mine, then I just turned op the highs a bit on my amp, and it sounded perfect to me 😊
Sorry for the long comment. I have adhd and asd, so it's common for me to go a bit of-track and get overly excited about subjects that interests me and overshare stuff about it 😋
@@nym053 Its all good. I am 13 months or so into learning to play Guitar and i am still unsure, what genre to focus in. I did look into Surf Rock and yes, Dick Dale used nothing but Stratocasters. Infact i am learning on an old 2010 Squier Bullet, the neck is super thin and easy to play. Sadly, being 14 years old, it needs some work. Some of the rosewood on the fretboard has chipped, the nut and tuners need to be replaced and the Trem needs a "proper" setup. Since i did not wish to stop learning to play and i really do not wish to mod that Squier (it kind of feels special to me), i am looking for something cheap to keep me playing and learning while the Strat is being repaired (i am a DIY-er and i learned so much in the process). Hence why i am looking at this Tele Kit, something different (not your typical Ash, Alder, Poplar or Basswood) and cheap and the sky is the limit when it comes to colours, changes, upgrades etc. I have torn appart guitars before and had (sadly) some bad experience with some kits, but lets see, i might get this one.
@@hussamjamil4980 Aarh yeah cool! Only way to get better at anything is to just keep at it.
Personally though, I find it really difficult to just practice, especially others music. It's not that I don't want to, but first and foremost I naturally prefer to experiment and discover things on my own (and I don't have much patience 😋). I do have come up with a couple of my own phrases that I practice once in awhile. These were found just by playing around intuitively to find what feels right. I also discovered a system, like a certain network pattern on the fretboard where it seems like notes fits well together. Not sure what scale that is 😁
I mostly do electronic music production and sound art though. But I don't want to limit myself to a certain type of instrument or genre. Music is music 😊
If I had to practice music from more specific genres though, then it would be from surf, spaghetti, rockabilly, goth, postpunk, reggae, jazz, swamp blues and afro funk 😄
My very good friend who's very proactive in anything that he decides to do, he's working fulltime as a professional visual artist (paintings, drawings and sculptures), and taught himself more or less how to play saxophone. He also has adhd like me, and therefore lacks patience and prefers to discover and experiment to figure things out himself. But he loves (free) jazz exactly because of that, so that's naturally what he tries to play. And as a serious hobby, he has played for fun occationally with a pro jazz player and learned a bit from that, just by playing along with him.
In 2 months time he practiced constantly just before a museum event, where he wanted to play alongside 2 pro jazz players. And even though his playing was more "simple" than theirs, he hit didn't play out of key, kept in time with the others, knew when to make space for the others, when to do solo and was still pretty expressive. I could clearly hear that he had improved significantly!
He told me, that he had practiced by playing along to jazz records, which is the oldschool, budget friendly and in some ways probably the best way to practice, because you actually get to play in the context of a pro band.
I can't remember who, but I heard in some documentaries or interviews from some pro musicians, that that's the way they got taught how to play, because they couldn't afford lessons.
So that's what I'd recommend to anybody at any level (you never get to good for practice 😋) for practicing, when not having a band at hand, based on others experiences at least 😁 (not to sound like some expert, because I'm not 😅)
I mainly improvise when doing takes. Then edit out after 😋
But overdubbing is also natural in a studio, so I play along to my own either improvised or programmed stuff. And this is also a kind of practice that works 😊
My first guitar was the HB tele diy kit. Did sound good as I recall. But wanted something "better", so I got a CV tele instead, which I eventually sold as well 😆
On a more serious note, trow a filtertron style in the neck position, and a bigsby at the end.
Hmm interesting. Need to think about that.
Even better, use a duesy trem... 😉
That offset bridge is a common problem on Teles. All my genuine Fender Teles had the same problem, some more than others. No problem playing wise, but it looks a bit cheap.
Yeah this is the third tele I've ever owned and it's the first one that has this issue. Lee Jacobson had a great suggestion to solve the issue, I think I'll do that and see how it goes.
OK, I think you've been lucky then. Anyway, good luck with it!
Thanks!
Does it stay in tune?
After new set of strings + a good setup, yes. The nut could use some work too, but I don't have the tools to do that.
@@CatPickStudios thank you sir!
Powertools?
Powertools.
I'm guessing the tuning machines aren't staggered, since it would be visible when you compared them side by side, but could the numbers maybe suggest different ratios? It's admittedly far fetched on such a cheap kit but I've seen cheap Chinese tuning machines with the feature on eBay and Thomann are sometimes surprisingly bad at describing their own products. Also, these kits are most likely assembled from what is available from several different manufacturers at the time of assembly, by someone who doesn't work with the webshop, which makes it even at least feasible.
I agree that there are sometimes amazing attention to detail on these cheap kits, but I'm not sure that's the case here. Maybe I should check with the other two guys who assembled their kits on the livestream whether they had the same numbering on theirs. :)
Yeah, it's a long shot, I know. :) I would still check the ratios anyway just because it's easy and would be so cool if a kit guitar for less than 80 bananas had a feature that normally costs twice that. :)
I'm considering getting one of those kits for the fun of it. Are you getting points with Thomann if I use the links in the description? if so, I'll make sure I use them when the time comes.
So I just found out the numbers only refer to which machine at the factory made them. Much less exciting than we thought :D
And yes, I get few points if you use my link. Thank you, much appreciated!
That makes a lot more sense. A tad bit anticlimactic but at least it's an explanation and one less thing to wonder about. :)
Cool. I'll make sure to use it then. Good stuff should be rewarded. :)
A mod platform
Affordable and pretty good quality one too.
Surprisingly the "cheap" guitar just sounds less pronounced. I would not even say worse.
э! вы че не по русски то?!
Так, там изичный инглиш, сабы включи, может понятней немного станет