Upgrading the fretboard of the Harley Benton

Today's operation, while quite time consuming, is by far the most significant in terms of improving the overall performance of the guitar. You remember that already upon opening the box, I had noticed that the surface of the rosewood fretboard was very obivously not up to standard:

The rosewood looks very raw, and the frets look very tarnished as well.

It did look pretty bad, and it felt bad too. The oxyded frets and the poorly sanded fretboard have a rasping effect on the strings whenever you try to apply vibrato or bends. As a result, these - quite essential - techniques not only become very uncomfortable and inaccurate to perform, but they also generate a lot of parasite noise as the string rasps against the raw surfaces. That, very clearly, put this guitar several leagues behind what I would call a decent instrument in terms of comfort and playability. And to be frank I had doubts whether I would be able to sort it out...

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: