Cavity search on the Harley Benton

It is always worth having a look at the control cavities of any guitar because it's often very telling of how much care was taken to build the instrument. The cheaper the gear, the messier those normally invisible cavities can be. And that's also where it is the easiest to evaluate the quality of the timber used, because surfaces are generally roughly routed, not sanded, not painted or finished in any way. So here, based on the price point, I was expecting some sort of a disaster.

The volume and tone pots' cavity

The toggle switch cavity

And I have to say...

...I was rather pleasantly surprised.  First of all the rountings are nice and clean, the bottom of the cavities is even and level, the wiring is reasonably orderly, and the solderings are neat and shiny. On higher grade instruments (e.g. my Gibson LP), even the inside of the cavities is sanded smooth and painted fully black, and on some instruments, especially ones with single coils, shielding paint or shielding foil is sometimes applied all around the cavities to prevent the electronics from picking up parasite signals. I did that on most of the guitar kits I have built so far, but I almost never saw that level of detail in any affordable stock guitar, nor in too many premium ones.

In this case, there's no sanding, no painting, no shielding, which is only fair given how tedious it would be to do and how it could impact the pricing. And there was only very little sawdust sitting at the bottom of the cavities. A bit of gentle low power vacuuming got me rid of that in no time.

Note however that the rims of the cavities (the shallow routs upon which the plastic plates sit) have received a rather random edge in black paint, so that the unfinished surface doesn't show in the interstice between the finished body surface of the back and the black plastic plates that cover the cavities. The rim of the toggle switch is fine, but very clearly the rim of the pot cavity was painted very inaccurately. Each of the two sharp corners of the rim has an ugly gap in the thin black paint line. Luckily that's very easy to fix:

Out came my stock of model paints.

Using a thin brush to apply Revell Color Matt Black nr 8 enamel model paint all around the edge.

Gone are the gaps. The enamel will become matt once dry.

Before putting back the cover plates (with adequately loctited screws, of course), there was a last thing I wanted to do. Thomann sometimes get scolded for not having serial number prints or decals anywhere on Harley Benton guitars. And it is true that I like having a unique identifier on each guitar, not necessarily as nicely carved in the back of the headstock as on Gibsons, but at least printed (or in the case of some of my kits, hand written). This guitar could be no exception. The truth (or at least what I suspect the truth to be) is that Harley Benton guitars do have a serial number, but it only appears on the paper label that comes attached to one of the tuning pegs. So for the lack of a better solution, what I did is that I simply glued that label on the inside of the pot cavity cover plate, so that the guitar permanently has its serial number, even if not in a visible place:

Every guitar deserves to bear its serial number somewhere.

Coming up next: the maple top.