Harley Benton DC Style Kit (think SG)

Welcome to the Next Project!

Here we go again!
Another kit assembly video, which will lead us into a modification project series. Let's start at the beginning, what's in the box and is it any good?

00:00 - lights, camera, action
00:04 - project intro
01:08 - what's in the box?
01:53 - follow the instructions / install the tuners
02:57 - electronics bench test
04:00 - electronics stuffin'
05:17 - trim n' tom
05:57 - neck pain
06:35 - strung up
07:02 - bad nut n' more
07:49 - tactical fretwire
08:06 - kit takeaway
10:58 - noise sample

At first glance, everything looked pretty good, especially for and $80 guitar kit. As the saying goes "don't judge a book by its cover", or maybe a better saying is "looks are only skin deep".

Giving the instructions a once over, I jumped in and kinda attempted to follow them. Adding the tuners to the neck was step 1, but I did some prep work first. I took one of the tuner mounting screws, rubbed some bar soap on the threads and pre-threaded each of the mounting holes. This helps ensure I won't snap the head off one of the little screws later during actual assembly.
Now the tuners were dropped in, screwed into place and the threaded bushing was secured. Hmm, something doesn't look right...due to lazy manufacturing and/or poor Quality Control, the tuners don't all line up nicely, but rather look a bit drunk in their posturing. Oh well, they will still work - as good as the poor quality tuners can be expected to.

On to bench testing the electronics. Again, this step isn't in the instructions, but I find it's easier to fix potential issues before everything is stuffed into the guitar. There were NO issues with the wiring, pickups, pots, switch and output jack. All went well.
Now to stuff all that wire into the little body.
Almost instantly I found the cavity routing left the top a little thick and the 3-way switch was then a bit short on threaded shaft. I wasn't able to use the little poker chip Rhythm/Lead decorative washer. No worries, I just left it off. Other than that, the trick is just to stuff all the excess pickup lead wire into the control cavity. Oh, the output jack mounting screw holes were not positioned perfectly, but I was able to get the screws in without redrilling... probably should have plugged and redrilled, but that's another day.

I now added the small pickguard/scratchplate. It honestly is cut and finished really well, I was surprised!
This was followed by pressing/hammering in the stop tailpiece posts and the bridge posts.
You won't have too much issue with these, the holes were properly drilled for size and spacing, and the wood is just soft enough you won't need a press or excessive hammering to get them in place. Again, this step went well.

This is where the "fun" ended.
It was time to mount the neck to the body. ( this is the second step in the directions, but I didn't want to wrestle with a full guitar to do all the other things. )
It was easy to see that the manufacturer didn't bother with a template for drilling the mounting holes in the body. It would have been nice, and made the kit look more professional, but that isn't the case.
The neck mounting plat holes and the body/neck holes aren't really close to being aligned. But in true caveman fashion, I put it together anyway.
I rubbed bar soap on the screw threads and pushed them in as I tightened them. Not ideal, but it worked well enough.

— This kit will be coming apart and getting a complete overhaul –

Time to string it up, and as this was underway, I was thinking something looked very wrong with the nut. With all the strings on, I adjusted the bridge to get the string action in the ballpark, but it was now clear that the neck has a major flaw.
With playable string height at the heel of the neck, the strings were all resting on the 1st fret. Funny, I didn't know this was a Zero-fret SG kit.
Off came the strings, and the nut. Only to expose an issue with the trussrod. It was projecting into the nut slot, the nut was just glued on top of the trussrod. We'll just say this is a big problem and the neck is a reject, and so would be the entire guitar kit because of it.
But, I shade-tree mechanic'd a crappy fix, got the nut and strings back on and plugged it in.

Honestly, it sounded pretty good. In the right hands it would likely sound very good. I was able to get the string action pretty low, but there was one more major issue with the neck. THE FRETS ARE TERRIBLE!
This is the worst fretwire I've every seen. They have the texture of beach sand, pitted and rough with sharp ends. UGH, I give up on this one.

Time to take it apart and start the repair process.

I give this a 1 star rating, which may be very generous. However, with any kit, there is a chance to get a great kit, a terrible kit, or something anywhere in-between. My kit was in the terrible range.

Thanks for watching, and stay tuned for the upcoming MOD project series!
Take care!