Harley Benton Ukulele DIY-Kit Sopran

I had a feeling that this kit is simply a box filled random parts failed on quality control.

The neck and body had pre-drilled holes for alignment, but the neck was almost 4 mm off center. I had to cut the dowels, drill new holes and align the body and neck properly. The body is made with metal clamps and at some places the lining does not even touch the sides!

The fretboard is made from thermally modified wood and the material is very brittle. It was also badly warped. Probably that?s why it was uneven on the sides and almost 2 mm too narrow at the top. I had to use some leftover veneer from other projects to build up the missing part. However, since this is a finished fretboard, the frets are still 2 mm narrow at the nut.

The bridge is made from the same brittle wood. The holes for the strings are pre-drilled, but the strange spacing is uneven. The spacing two high strings is 3 mm(!) more then between the two low strings. The bridge location described in the instructions is completely wrong, you should measure it yourself properly, based on the scale length.

Conclusion - yes, it is possible to build a working ukulele from this kit, but you have to be familiar to the basics of guitar making. Maybe I simply got a wrong package, but the quality of mine was close to unacceptable. Thomann should either remove this kit from the shop, or design a better quality kit and raise the price with 5 euros or so. I bet this kit ends up in the trash bin in most of cases.

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

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.

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.

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.