Does the Harley Benton have a real maple top?

Maple capping a mahogany body serves a number of purposes, it defines the tone and general acoustics of the instrument, it helps protect the body against warpage, and it does offer superior aesthetic options such as flamed and quilted tops among others. On many guitars, the quality and look of the maple top alone suffice to shift the guitar into premium category, and/or to inflate its price by anything between a hundred and several hundred bucks. So what you get a full mahogany set neck guitar for €158 with a maple top that looks like bookmatched flame (one of the most expensive outfits of maple), you start to wonder:

• Is there truly a cap or was the shape of the top carved into the mahogany instead, like on the very first cheap Chinese guitar kit I bought a few years ago?
• If there is a cap, is it real maple, or something else, a softer and less noble timber?
• Is the flaming part of the massive top (it never is in this price range), is it veneer, or is it photoflame (a picture of a flamed top glued under the coating)?
• If it's veneer, how thin is it? Usually as thin as they can make it.

That certainly looks like a flamed top.

It does look bookmatched alright (i.e. symmetric along the axis of the guitar).

And it's evenly figured all across the surface.

So what's the truth of it? Only one way to know:

Let's look inside the pickup cavities. Starting with the neck pickup, where, aside from ugly but harmless glue residues and sawdust I simply vacuumed out, I was very pleased with what I saw:

That is indeed a plain massive maple cap right there, neatly routed along with the mahagony.

Notice also that the neck is truly mahogany as well, and its long tenon sits very snuggly and nicely deep into the cavity. That's pretty much as good as it can get. And the top is equally visible in the other cavity:

You can see the line between the body and the top because mahagony and  maple have clearly different textures.

Here the routing goes 11mm deep into the mahogany, the maple cap is 7.5mm thick and the flamed veneer is 0.75mm thin.

That, my friends, is a real, sturdy and significant maple cap, and the veneer on top not only looks very good, but it also has enough thickness not to be ruined by the slightest dent on the surface. Note also that the lacquer is very thin, which is rather rare in this price range (generally poor quality timber is compensated by loads of shiny stuff on top, which unfortunately is an additional tone killer). None of that here: real mahogany, real maple, fine veneer and thin lacquer. The price-quality ratio of this guitar is mind-boggling.

Okay, but how does all of this compare to the specs of the real thing, the Gibson Les Paul with its carved full solid book-matched maple top? I'll be frank, I did not unstring the Gibson and I did not dismount its Burstbuckers just to have a look underneath, but to get a good idea, it is enough to look at the proportion of maple capping visible below the binding in the cutaway under the neck joint:

The lighter stripe below the binding indicates the thickness of the maple top on the Harley Benton.

And here's that of the Gibson Les Paul.

Overall, my sense is that the Gibson's top might be a tad thicker, but nothing of great significance (certainly not considering the 1:15 price ratio). Well done Harley Benton. So far, you look like big bang for the buck!

Coming up next: the headstock.