This is one of Tim's brand new Harley Benton guitars delivered directly from Germany to Reloved Guitars for set up. I set up one of these when they first came out and that guitar simply would not return to pitch when using the tremolo arm. Since then I'm thinking they may have opted for a better (Wilkinson) 2 point tremolo because the one on this model works without any problem at all. The guitar is a good looking 'super strat' kind of style with HSH pickup configuration. The roasted maple fingerboard looks great (albeit visually a bit 'dry') but the stainless steel frets were hellishly scratchy on first playing. The plan was to fit an adjustable Tusq nut (Tim wanted one of these) although this model DOES come with a Tusq nut fitted. On removing the original nut I discovered that the nut slot was in fact a little too shallow to work with the adjustable nut so I had to revert to a 12" radius fixed nut. So you'll see me go through a couple of nuts en route to this solution in part because of my (false!) assumption that this was a 9.5" radius neck. When I discovered finally that it was 12" I settled on a white nut and white string trees to match.
The fret levelling process took out a tiny bit of fret slap on these otherwise pretty level frets and allowed me to re-crown, sand and polish out the rough frets. The only thing I could find as a complaint with this guitar was the rusty screws that surprised me when I removed the tremolo springs cover on the back. I have no idea what caused this rust - or how the wood could come to be so damp or wet long enough for that rust to develop but close inspection confirmed it was indeed good old fashioned rust. I've seen a ton of guitars with rusty pickguard screws over the years but none of them 'brand new' from the retailer. But then again, who knows how long really passes from manufacture to shipping out to the buying customer?
24 сен 2022
