Unboxing the Harley Benton

The order was placed at 3:40 on a Monday afternoon, the pack arrived on Thursday morning at 11:30, and even in the midst of the pre-Xmas madness, is only came so late because UPS mistakenly sent it to Cologne instead of Brussels at first, causing a 24 hour delay. Kudos to Thomann anyway for the quick and free shipping.

The guitar came thoroughly and neatly packaged with ample protection around it, hopefully it did not get damaged in transit. Straight out of the box, it did look very okay:

It does look almost as good as on the stock pictures.

The grade of the flamed top is more AA+ than truly AAA. The burst reminds me of the Vintage Sunburst Les Paul Studio.

The body and neck are made of nice mahogany (well, sapele), decently filled with grain filler.

But it is a 5-piece body and the pieces are not parallel to the axis of the guitar. Not that I mind.

The neck is very pretty looking.

3-piece set neck: tenon + neck + headstock. The angled collar allegedly lends extra strength. All the better.

The terms of comparison. On the left the Gibson Les Paul, on the right the Harley Benton Single Cut.

Coming up next: close inspection.