Permanently removing the scratchplate of the Harley Benton

Whether a Les Paul type guitar looks better with or without a scratchplate will never cease to be a heated discussion. Personally I like both looks. I kept the original scratchplate on my Gibson but chose not mount it onto a Les Paul kit I once built. In this case, I wanted to take full advantage of the beautiful vintage burst finish so I chose to remove the scratchplate. As a player, I don't rest my picking hand on it anyway.

That scratchplate will go.

The problem with removing a scratchplate is always what to do with the screwholes, Some put the screws back in, but that looks silly.Others cement the hole with some filler, but that's tedious to do and you might damage the finish in the process. So...

Examining the headstock of the Harley Benton

Most focus always goes to the body, so one may easily overlook blemishes or imperfections on the headstock. That would be a mistake since the headstock is where the strings are held and brought in tune. If the headstock and/or its gear are not up to speed, the guitar will likely be no good.

I had already noticed the A string's tuner shaft protruding a little. Anything else?

So far I've been rather pleased with the body, how lucky am I with the headstock?

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:

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...

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.

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...