Harley Benton Bass Guitar Kit P-Style

still using it after a year, I had to do a lot of improvements, some of them requiring quite a bit of care attention, the drill holes for the bridge are in line but slightly tilted, you can see it if you look closely,
the pickup holes are off axis and the magnets did not sit properly below each string so I had to relocate them, and i had to re-route the pickguard to fit the pickups in the new position. It looks like the body has not been modeled with the correct measurements, i changed two pickguards and I had to reroute them both. This makes me think that the bridge screw holes and the pickup holes may have not been drilled using the correct template....

Anyway, the neck is good, i managed to shape a vintage telecaster bass headstock out of the paddle sized original headstock.
The back of the neck is satin finished, so it is fast enough and the shape is a C more or less like a 70's precision bass. All in all I like it.

+ Light weight body ready to paint
+ 2 way thruss rod that works great
+ no fret leveling needed. no high frets . ready to go
+ good packaging
+ bridge,tuners, are okay quality
+ okay tone on the pick ups
+ easy install of the electronics

- almost all holes had to be repiloted/ re- drilled because they didn't match the parts
- low output
- needed neck shim
-- The nut is at okay height but of too soft material. shavings apear just when tuning

+- strings feel thin and sharp but that may be preference.

Overall it's worth the money and when being assembled porperly and maybe with a few upgrades you can really build the guitar of your dreams for a good price.

I bought this because I have always wanted to build my own guitars and I felt that starting with a kit would be a good first step.

The finish on the neck in my kit was (and remains) excellent. Unfortunately there are a number of machining scratches visible on the body. I could fix these easily with a little sanding, but that also removes the sealant coating which then needs to be re-applied before painting. I opted not to treat the scratches before painting because I will be using my bass for punk music.

Fitting the machine heads to the head of the guitar was reasonably easy once I realised that they were completely different to the ones described in the instruction book. Unfortunately the screws supplied with the kit for this purpose are quite weak; the head came off 2 of the 16 during installation (and I was being really careful after the first failure)

Fitting the neck to the body was simple, and did match the instructions.

In my kit, the machined slot in the faceplate to allow for the neck was approximately 1mm too narrow. I had to make it larger using cutting pliers to complete the build, with the result that my instrument is not quite as pretty as it could be.

Pickup installation was smooth.

The bridge is in the right place to allow all four strings to be adjusted for correct intonation, which was no more or less tedious on this than any other guitar or bass.

The sound is good once you get the action and the pickup positions set correctly.

If you want to build your own instruments in the future this is a good place to start: it is far easier that starting with a heap of wood and going from there, but not so easy that you will learn nothing from doing it. It took me about 2 hours to assemble (not including painting) and set-up.

I got this more for the sake of putting it together and have something to have fun with, rather than to use as a "real instrument". There was no problem building it, but my first find was that the strings that came with it was of really poor quality.
I also need to adjust the neck as soon as there is a major change of weather.
However, it's quite playable and sounds reasonably OK. Big plus in that you - and only you - are fully responsible for the painting (my bed frame and the body now have the same color) and the Head Design (pun intended). I've had it for 7 years now and it still does its thing. I even had it on some small gigs without shame.

I had been out of guitar making for a few years and wanted something to get me interested in making again so I got this. When I got it finished the sound was OK, but do expect to have to make some small adjustments along the way. A bit of filing, change some screws over ? that kind of thing.
The machine heads on my kit were such bad quality that 2 of them chewed up the teeth on the gears as soon as I put stings on. Thomann sorted this out right away, no fuss. I believe the machine heads have now been changed in the kit since I got mine. A good starter kit, but not the sort of instrument you'll play long-term.