New (Very Cheap) Guitar Day

guitarjack66 · May 2022

Got my first Harley benton Guitar delivered today for the princely sum of £74 with delivery charges. Hard to fault it really,expect maybe a slightly high action and a 'coffee table' design I'm not keen on. Smaller bodies folk style instrument.

https://imgur.com/v8tPVg4

WBT2079 · May 2022

How does it sound. I’m looking for a bit of a banger to sit in the corner of the living room that I won’t be worried if it gets knocked a bit to replace a 18 year old Jim Deacon folk style whose bracing is starting to come unstuck.

hollywoodrox · May 2022

When I got my vintage sunburst 120 cutaway it was about 54- 56 . They’re very good . I spent £40 on a setup and it will do me now

guitarjack66 · May 2022

WBT2079 said:

How does it sound. I’m looking for a bit of a banger to sit in the corner of the living room that I won’t be worried if it gets knocked a bit to replace a 18 year old Jim Deacon folk style whose bracing is starting to come unstuck.

I haven't had a lot of time on it but it sounds ok. A new set of strings and a set up would help significantly though.You could play it straight from the box,no problem though. £74 for a fully function cheap guitar is not half bad. I haven't tried the pick up just yet though.

GoFish · May 2022

What?! You didn't spend twice that to get upto the free delivery threshold?

That's half the hassle! I once paid the extra £8 for a set of TI flats - that still made them cheaper than UK sellers. Was a while ago though.

I'll look forward to getting an update in a week or a month. Hope it suits you.

HNGD!!

Soupman · May 2022

Harley Bentons seem to have a good name as value instruments. Looks decent, & you say it has a pick-up fitted for that price? I paid a hundred for a fishman soundhole pick-up! And I had to fit it myself!

bertie · May 2022

can't see it - what is it ?

bluecat · May 2022

I can see it fine Bertie ,must be something wrong with your settings mate .what can you buy for £78. ?who knows.

Dave_Mc · May 2022

Very nice! Hard to go wrong for £74. I have to admit I've been eyeing up some of the HB acoustics recently, too...

guitarjack66 · May 2022

Dave_Mc said:

Very nice! Hard to go wrong for £74. I have to admit I've been eyeing up some of the HB acoustics recently, too...

I wouldnt advise you against one. I will not write them off for any of my future purchases.

bertie · May 2022

bluecat said:

I can see it fine Bertie ,must be something wrong with your settings mate .what can you buy for £78. ?who knows.

not at all, I just dont have an imgur account

guitarjack66 · May 2022

bertie said:

bluecat said:

I can see it fine Bertie ,must be something wrong with your settings mate .what can you buy for £78. ?who knows.

not at all, I just dont have an imgur account

You dont need one,I dont have one either.

GoFish · May 2022

Imgur is data heavy, so sometimes can be bumpy if you're on mobile etc. Otherwise it's probably something in your settings.

guitarjack66 · May 2022

I cant use imgur on mobile,only on my laptop.

Mellish · May 2022

@guitarjack66 ; nip it round to KGB on Pacific Road, Birkenhead mate, to get the setup dialled in. They're pretty good

Dave_Mc · May 2022

guitarjack66 said:

Dave_Mc said:

Very nice! Hard to go wrong for £74. I have to admit I've been eyeing up some of the HB acoustics recently, too...

I wouldnt advise you against one. I will not write them off for any of my future purchases.

I'm definitely struggling to avoid them... Have managed so far, but it's getting harder.

DavidR · May 2022

All/mostly mahogany? Looks like it might be. And is that an abalone rosette and real purfling. If so that's incredibly impressive for £74.

If so makes my recent purchase of Vintage V300MH at £220 look positively expensive!

Only joking. Buying a cheap reasonably good quality instrument and 'doing it up' a good option in these troubled times. Just ordered a clear pickguard for mine off Amazon for less than a tenner. Having only just noticed it didn't have one. Looks like you could add pickgguard too if you wanted one. Otherwise just adjusted action and swapped horribly cheap bridge pins. Looked at upgrading bridge saddle and tuners but in fact they're fine.

One nice thing about a wallet-friendly guitar is you're less bothered about what you do with it and where you take it. It's a long time since I didn't put a guitar on a stand but this one? Just prop it against the table. Doodle enhancing!

Congrats on your new instrument. Some more description would be interesting please :-)

Tannin · May 2022

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that you are going to get way more than your £74 worth of fun out of this little thing. It is good to have a few different instruments to match up with the mood of the moment. Enjoy!

PS: which bit is the coffee table?

guitarjack66 · May 2022

Tannin said:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that you are going to get way more than your £74 worth of fun out of this little thing. It is good to have a few different instruments to match up with the mood of the moment. Enjoy!

PS: which bit is the coffee table?

Haha! @Tannin the 'coffee table' design is my description of the lined Mahogany? design I believe. It always reminds me of the furniture of elderly relatives and I had an SG in that design and hated it.
@DavidR The 'abalone' rosette appears to be some kind of transfer type deign and not the real thing. And while it may be described as 'Mahogany' I'd be surprised if that Mahogany is any thicker than laminate. The guitar feels very light so to my untrained eye it doesn't give off a 'premium' feel at all. This is not any kind of deal breaker at all,it's just that my other guitars are more solid,for want of a better word.
There are some interesting string wraps on the headstock where the strings dont even go through the eyelet on the tuners but that will be remedied by new strings.
I havent tried the pick up yet but will get to that in due course.

Mellish · May 2022

I wouldn't say "cheap". To me, it conjures up a mental image of tacky and nasty. Inexpensive is much better

That looks a decent guitar.

guitarjack66 · May 2022

Mellish said:

I wouldn't say "cheap". To me, it conjures up a mental image of tacky and nasty. Inexpensive is much better

That looks a decent guitar.

Fair enough,inexpensive is a good word for it. It's definitely not premium but its a fully functional guitar for a very reasonable price. I now want an electric,a tele,but Thomann's versions tend to be a bit heavy and that is a problem for a *cough,cough* middle aged man like me.

bertie · May 2022

guitarjack66 said:

bertie said:

bluecat said:

I can see it fine Bertie ,must be something wrong with your settings mate .what can you buy for £78. ?who knows.

not at all, I just dont have an imgur account

You dont need one,I dont have one either.

hmm odd, cos I can never see any pics that are links to being hosted on imgur - only if the pics are embedded here

tomatos tomatos

guitarjack66 · May 2022

bertie said:

guitarjack66 said:

bertie said:

bluecat said:

I can see it fine Bertie ,must be something wrong with your settings mate .what can you buy for £78. ?who knows.

not at all, I just dont have an imgur account

You dont need one,I dont have one either.

hmm odd, cos I can never see any pics that are links to being hosted on imgur - only if the pics are embedded here

tomatos tomatos

Like I say,I cant upload on imgur on mobile,but I can still see the photos when I click on the link. I think it may be a settings or permission problem for you. Bloody mobile phones!

bertie · May 2022

guitarjack66 said:
Like I say,I cant upload on imgur on mobile,but I can still see the photos when I click on the link. I think it may be a settings or permission problem for you. Bloody mobile phones!

<

I only ever use a laptop for WWW - when I click on a link all I get is a blank/black screen,

......................... Im not overly worried

guitarjack66 · May 2022

Played my guitar again for a while but the string height is much higher than I originally realised. It will need a set up and string change before I can give a detailed post on how it feels and sounds. It still sounds fine but the string height is a problem for me given that I aeem to have a lighter touch,probably due to mostly playing liggt strings I reckon. Just factor in a set up to your price.

BillDL · May 2022

As well as normally having higher action on acoustics than you have on electrics, most lower and mid-priced acoustic guitars come with higher action than most people feel is comfortable. I suppose they are erring on the side of safety to some extent, but probably the main reason is that fine tuning the setup on an acoustic guitar is time consuming and the labour costs would increase the price. As you say, unless you have the tools and experience to set the neck relief with the truss rod, sand off a small amount accurately from the bottom of the saddle, and cut the nut slots to the optimum depth, you need to factor a setup into your cost.

There is also the aspect that a higher action will hide any imperfections with fret heights. This has always been a common practice, but these days the fretting of even budget guitars is much more consistent and of higher standard than it used to be and there shouldn't be as much need to do this. I would guess that on production line budget guitars these days the frets are probably pressed in by a machine that seats them all at the same time and with the same pressure rather than being pressed (or hammered) into the slots one at a time as would have been done before everything became so hightly automated and accurate.

If you look at the action of a new Martin acoustic guitar set up in their factory it's invariably very high for people that have been used to playing electric guitars exclusively and even be uncomfortably high for some acoustic players, especially if it is strung with 13s. I don't know their "factory specs", and it possibly varies depending on the guitar type, but I would guess that they probably aim for an action of 7/64" (2.8mm) on the low E at the 12th fret and 5/64" (2mm) on the high E, whereas an electric guitar would generally be somewhere around 2mm down to 1.6mm. It's amazing the difference in feel just under 1mm can make. The neck relief on most acoustic guitars needs to be a little greater than an electric guitar, so it might be 0.012" on a Martin as opposed to 0.008 to 0.010" on an electric guitar.

The temptation is to take a lot of height from the underside of the saddle and it ends up too low and with insufficient string breakover angle where it can end up sounding clanky. It's a very fine balance between playing comfort and as full a sound as possible on an acoustic.

Do you have the proper tools to do your own acoustic setups?

Tannin · May 2022

Martin factory specs are as @BillDL says: 2.8mm bass and 2.0mm treble. I had a bit of a look around for other manufacturers' numbers and didn't find anything, but most will be pretty close to the same as that.

guitarjack66 · May 2022

BillDL said:

As well as normally having higher action on acoustics than you have on electrics, most lower and mid-priced acoustic guitars come with higher action than most people feel is comfortable. I suppose they are erring on the side of safety to some extent, but probably the main reason is that fine tuning the setup on an acoustic guitar is time consuming and the labour costs would increase the price. As you say, unless you have the tools and experience to set the neck relief with the truss rod, sand off a small amount accurately from the bottom of the saddle, and cut the nut slots to the optimum depth, you need to factor a setup into your cost.

There is also the aspect that a higher action will hide any imperfections with fret heights. This has always been a common practice, but these days the fretting of even budget guitars is much more consistent and of higher standard than it used to be and there shouldn't be as much need to do this. I would guess that on production line budget guitars these days the frets are probably pressed in by a machine that seats them all at the same time and with the same pressure rather than being pressed (or hammered) into the slots one at a time as would have been done before everything became so hightly automated and accurate.

If you look at the action of a new Martin acoustic guitar set up in their factory it's invariably very high for people that have been used to playing electric guitars exclusively and even be uncomfortably high for some acoustic players, especially if it is strung with 13s. I don't know their "factory specs", and it possibly varies depending on the guitar type, but I would guess that they probably aim for an action of 7/64" (2.8mm) on the low E at the 12th fret and 5/64" (2mm) on the high E, whereas an electric guitar would generally be somewhere around 2mm down to 1.6mm. It's amazing the difference in feel just under 1mm can make. The neck relief on most acoustic guitars needs to be a little greater than an electric guitar, so it might be 0.012" on a Martin as opposed to 0.008 to 0.010" on an electric guitar.

The temptation is to take a lot of height from the underside of the saddle and it ends up too low and with insufficient string breakover angle where it can end up sounding clanky. It's a very fine balance between playing comfort and as full a sound as possible on an acoustic.

Do you have the proper tools to do your own acoustic setups?

No,I have neither the tools nor space let alone the experience. String changing is the limit of my repair experience. I tend to look after my guitars,regardless of their value so a more professional set up is the norm for me.

DavidR · May 2022

Over the years, as an ordinary player its not so difficult to learn to adjust action guitarjack. Lots of great YouTube videos on this. Then just keep doing it. It is possible to teach yourself how to do it if you're a bit handy. Or watch your luthier or setup guy. Most people love showing off!

Neck relief - easy and reversible, just need an Allen key and string height measure ruler and suss out which way to turn. Bridge saddle - again easy. Measure with string height ruler, draw line on bottom of bridge saddle and sand down with sandpaper and sanding block. Or table! Take it down slowly in increments as you learn but, if you mess up, get another saddle and start again. An opportunity to change saddle too to e.g. bone. Nut - a bit more dodgy because nuts, though not impossible for the mere enthusiast, are more difficult to swap in and out. You'll definitely need proper files and, in my experience, these aren't always on Amazon and have to be sourced from a more specialist guitar stockist. Do it very very slowly, I just do 5 filing actions per slot at a time and then restring and test play and then +/- repeat. Some experience essential. (But you'll only get that by having a go!)

Fretwork will require a luthier if you're just a keen player IMO. Other bigger things, like a twisted neck or a bowed up top are very rare but are major luthier jobs. And expensive.

A lot of action adjustment is just knowledge of how a guitar works and what actually constitutes the components of action. Especially really getting an understanding of neck relief. Getting it all eventually right is very satisfying.

Top tips - sight down a fretboard from the head end to look at general action and neck relief. Put the guitar on a stand and then stand above it and look down the fretboard from this compressed perspective. You can actually see things like neck relief, straightness and overall string height. Make changes slowly and step by step.

Tannin · May 2022

Good advice from @DavidR (as usual). I follow a mid-way path though. Happy to adjust the neck relief, and although I 've never done it I don't rule out adjusting a saddle one day, but I leave the nut alone. For one thing, I don't have the tools and they are quite expensive.

For another reason, it gives me an excuse to take the guitar into Paul, who will very likely do a better job than I can, who has a vast wealth of experience and is happy to pass bits of it on, and who charges very little for it. It also reminds him that I exist and I'm now up to #3 on his waiting list for a new guitar, and that it's nearly time to start looking around for the woods. (I was #5 when I put my deposit down. Slowly, slowly he will get around to my build.)

guitarjack66 · May 2022

DavidR said:

Over the years, as an ordinary player its not so difficult to learn to adjust action guitarjack. Lots of great YouTube videos on this. Then just keep doing it. It is possible to teach yourself how to do it if you're a bit handy. Or watch your luthier or setup guy. Most people love showing off!

Neck relief - easy and reversible, just need an Allen key and string height measure ruler and suss out which way to turn. Bridge saddle - again easy. Measure with string height ruler, draw line on bottom of bridge saddle and sand down with sandpaper and sanding block. Or table! Take it down slowly in increments as you learn but, if you mess up, get another saddle and start again. An opportunity to change saddle too to e.g. bone. Nut - a bit more dodgy because nuts, though not impossible for the mere enthusiast, are more difficult to swap in and out. You'll definitely need proper files and, in my experience, these aren't always on Amazon and have to be sourced from a more specialist guitar stockist. Do it very very slowly, I just do 5 filing actions per slot at a time and then restring and test play and then +/- repeat. Some experience essential. (But you'll only get that by having a go!)

Fretwork will require a luthier if you're just a keen player IMO. Other bigger things, like a twisted neck or a bowed up top are very rare but are major luthier jobs. And expensive.

A lot of action adjustment is just knowledge of how a guitar works and what actually constitutes the components of action. Especially really getting an understanding of neck relief. Getting it all eventually right is very satisfying.

Top tips - sight down a fretboard from the head end to look at general action and neck relief. Put the guitar on a stand and then stand above it and look down the fretboard from this compressed perspective. You can actually see things like neck relief, straightness and overall string height. Make changes slowly and step by step.

Thanks for this. But,you mention the word 'handy' which I am unfortunately not at. I am very much an 'Unhandy Jack.'

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New (Very Cheap) Guitar Day

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