Upgrading my bargain Harley Benton from Thomann

I have had a number of guitars over the years. It is fair to say I have plenty of them now. I remember some of the first Chinese mass produced pieces of junk I've had, twenty years ago. They were really terrible, and there are still plenty of those out there. I got rid of one just last week (and it was actually a recent one, from 2014, and of a brand owned by none other than the big G...). Total waste of trees.

Yet more and more often I've been coming across quite good reviews of white label Chinese guitars. In particular Thomann's latest run of their EOM branded single cuts seemed to stand out of the lot. And they do really look pretty on the pictures! Especially the Harley Benton SC-450Plus VB Vintage Series which comes the closest to my all-time favourite and fancy, the Desert Burst Les Paul Traditional.

That's the real stuff by Gibson.

And that's the Harley Benton's stock picture from the Thomann website.

What the hell, I thought...
...it's totally worth throwing 158 of my Euros at one of those, just to check it out for myself and see what can be made of it with a bit of work. The point is also to see how at the start of the journey and by the end of the day it compares to my genuine 2013 Gibson Les Paul Standard TA which had cost exactly fifteen times more.

That's my Gibson. It's the benchmark the Harley Benton will be measured against.

And that's also my pretext to start this blog, walking through every little step that'll hopefully take that cheap piece of Chinese industrial produce to a place where I can decently call it a guitar. Let's see how much tweaking it will take, and whether it is at all feasible. So let's wait for the delivery truck, open the box, and get started!

Coming up next: unboxing.