Harley Benton Bass Guitar Kit J-Style

This was the first time I'd attempted to build an instrument from a kit.
I've been a guitar player for over 40 years, and wanted a bass for home recording, but also for a bit of a 'do it yourself' challenge.
I downloaded a template for the headstock from the web, cut out the shape with a coping saw, used a file and emery cloth to smooth it off.
Lacquered it with some automotive acrylic lacquer I had lying around and treated the fingerboard to lashings of lemon oil. Some spikey fret ends were smoothed with a small file and polished with emery cloth.
The body was a disappointment, being of two distinct colours of wood, so had to be painted. I chose gold to go with the tortoiseshell pickguard I'd ordered with the kit. It was only after applying the paint that I realised I'd misread the instructions.
The body needs grain sealer and primer before painting. I'd recommend this be stated clearly in the instructions if possible. I didn't do this, and consequently the woodgrain soaked up loads of paint and is still visible after many coats. Be warned, future buyers!
I lined the cavities with copper foil for shielding, then the whole thing went together like a dream, and I set it up for neck relief, intonation and action as per online recommendations.
Here's the best part. The sound is fantastic and very like the genuine article; so much so that the bass player in my band wants me to build him one. It'll be ordered today.
A few little niggles, but the end result is great.

Body:
-The body needed a lot of sanding and putty before I could paint it.
-The wood is also really soft and light. This means it dents easily and the bass has quite a lot of neck dive.
-The predrilled holles were drilled in the correct position but the holes for the strap buttons were too big for the screws so I had to use bigger screws.
Neck:
-The neck was finished well. The fretboard needed a bit of cleaning
-The frets were 100% perfectly level and perfectly crowned, the did however need polishing and the fret ends needed rounding (they were not sharp but I prefer rounded fret edges).
-The nut was cut correctly.
-The neck fitted very tight in the neck pocket.
Hardware:
-All the hardware works, the tuners aren't super smooth but they do the job.
-I can't comment much on the sound of the pickups because I'm new to bass guitar. I don't know how they should sound. But I think they sound just fine.
Conclusion
I give this bass a 7/10
It is a perfectly functional and good looking bass but it has neckdive and the body dents easily. I also needed some different screws than they provided to assemble the strap buttons.

I bought this kit because I had some Seymour Duncan NYC 4 pickups that were originally going on another bass, but this never happened. It was never planned to use any of the kit hardware, just the body and neck.

As the NYCs were both shorter and wider than the original Jazz Bass pickups, I had to fill in the bridge pickup cavity with wood and then rout it out to the correct shape. The neck pickup rout is hidden by the scratchplate, so that just needed to be expanded, but I had to make the scratchplate from a blank. I cut the original paddle headstock with my own slimmer take on the traditional Fender outline.

The guitar body is finished in Sonic Blue nitrocellulose paint, and the neck in a mixture of amber tinted and clear nitrocellulose lacquer. The scratchplate is 3-ply mint green. My first attempt at spraying it saw the nitro react with the standard pore-filler, so I had to sand the body back to remove that.

The original plastic nut was replaced with a bone one.
Tuners are Hipshot ultralights, with an Xtender key (to allow an easy drop D via a lever) for the E string. The kit ferrules for the tuners were missing (not a problem for me), and the holes for the tuners turned out to be slightly wider than standard, so they were filled and redrilled to get a good fit.

There's a Hipshot string retainer in place of the standard round button and staying with the Hipshot hardware theme, the bridge is a Hipshot Kickass unit.

To make full use of the pickups, whilst keeping the general visual look of a Jazz Bass, the controls consist of a stacked volume and tone control, a blend pot, to mix between the two pickup outputs (rather than a 3-position selector switch), with the remaining two knobs being 3-position rotary switches, allowing selection of parallel, series and single coil mode for each pickup for maximum flexibility.

I used the jack socket hole on the control plate for the second rotary switch, so the output jack has moved to the bottom edge of the body.

I levelled and re-profiled the frets and removed some sharp fret ends. The neck feels good, and the bass plays with a nice low action. Sounds good as well.

All strung up, the bass weighs in bang-on 4kg (8.8 lbs), so is at the light end of typical Jazz Bass weights.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img923/7571/WjKFSq.jpg

This kit is a good buy for it's price / quality ratio.

The body I has been finished pretty well, made up of 3 pieces, having a nice grain to the texture.

The neck also came in a good gondition and finish, but having a very long scratch along the fretboard, under the frets which means the scratch has been made in the fabrication process, looked over this issue and the frets were just pushed in, overlooking this issue.

The Roseacer substitute for Rosewood (or heat treated maple) isn't one of the best looking woods. It has a roasted ash like texture to it, and it gives the feel of being painted.

Besides these imperfections, the sounds from the pickups are very good for their price range (probably very low, mass-produced) so the pickups save the overall quality of the bass.
The neck fits loosely in the neck pocket but with the pickguard mounted before, I could get a snug fit.
Setup wasn't an issue, trussrod worked well.
However for a very low action playability, the frets needed leveling.

Overall it is a nice and playable instrument, although some things aren't very pleasing about it.

I'm a simple Scandinavian man, I buy Ikea and follow the instructions. I was expecting a simillar experience with this build, boy was I in for a ride. The instructions are so bad that I had to resort to finding a video of a guy putting it together and even then I had to guess in many places which screws go where because they don't do the simple thing where they tell you which screws go where. So I started screwing a couple of screws in the wrong place, and when I tried to take them out their heads broke off so now their stuck in there.
If you can deal with that then I can recommend this build, it's a fine instrument once it's put together. But boy do they need to update the instructions.

Bought the kit out of interest for bass playing after a good experience with the T-style guitar kit.
Initial assembly was easy and took about an hour, after which the bass was ready to play. Out of the box it is a fairly playable instrument. After preliminary assembly and playing I took the kit apart for painting and some hardware upgrades, after which it became a really nice instrument. The neck needed quite a lot of fret leveling, but it was a good learning experience to get fretwork practice.
All in all you can get a working instrument for less than 100¤, but to get the most out of the kit, hardware modifications are recommended. In the end I changed out all of the electronics and hardware except for the body and neck. I would recommend this kit to somebody who needs an affordable instrument with possibilities for future upgrades.