And after drying its time for test-fitting: A couple of clear coats to stabilize the prints and you’re ready to go.įirst I sprayed some nitro yellow see-through lacquer. Reworked it in my favorite drawing program Inkscape and printed several logo’s on Avery transparant label paper. I was able to find a matching logo on the internet. I had to remove everything from the headstock…. But it turned out that the finishing layer gave the yellow coloring. I got a bit bored with the Harley Benton logo so I attempted to remove it with a little bit of sanding. After that drilling the screw holes and finishing them with a rounded bit so the screws will fit perfectly. I did’t dor any rounding of the edges, otherwise you would see that it is three-ply material. Please keep the protection tape on the pickguard material, it prevents scratches. Next step was to make some templates from MDF based on the original pickguard(s) and corrected where it needed to be corrected.Īfter roughly cutting the material and taping it to the template (I love double-stick tape!), it was time to use my homemade table-router: RoutingĪll went fine. It is not see-through as the original is.Īs you can see in the picture below, the original “pickguard” doesn’t fit perfectly around the bridge. It’s three ply and the WCY probably stands for “WildCat Yellow” as that was on the back sticker. Pickguard replacement for a more authentic lookįirst I had to find some good looking pickguard material.But with nicely rounded frets I would really recommend this guitar, also for beginners. Sorry Thomann, the guitar in this state is a fail. They are Wilkinson pick-ups, I am not too excited about them but I am going to replace them anyway. But a guitar in this state should never be shipped to a customer.Įverybody Always wants to know what the pick-ups sound like. For me it’s a 15 minute job to fix it, especially when I combine it with a nut replacement and an overall fret levelling. A guitar like that would never be able to pass quality control. The fret ends stick out and that hurts your fingers. But there is one drawback (which can be fixed), the frets are not finished well. Overall, a nice guitar considering it’s price. Equipped with d’Addario strings! Nicely in tune and intonated.
In the beginning I thought the frets were a little too high for my taste but after picking it up for a second time it felt more comfortable.
But it should be playable and with a few modifications and upgrades Some quite nice guitars may come from these countries, of course -especially for that price- it’s never going to match a high-end guitar. The guitars are probably made in China, maybe Indonesia.
It’s a German online store so when you are living outside of the EU, their products may become quite expensive because of taxes and shipping costs. In fact it is a brand run by one of the biggest online music stores: Thomann. Harley Benton is not a very familiar name. There are some “unboxing videos” of this guitar on youtube and the reviews are not that bad. Finally after some contemplating, I decided to purchase the Harley Benton TE-80 guitar which looks as a quite good copy of the Prince telecaster.
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