Harley Benton Ukulele DIY-Kit Concert

I bought these as an addition when I was order two guitar kits. They were really inexpensive and didn't increase shipping so I thought what the heck.

This was a fun, relatively easy project and the end result was pretty good. I made two of them as Christmas gifts and the recipients loved them since I hand painted the bodies.

The bodies looked good and took a stain nicely although there was some extra glue spots. The alignment of the necks to the bodies were ok. The fretboards were not the same width of the neck along the entire length so there was some fit issues.

The instructions were the worst part: the placement of the bridge is just wrong and I think you would have horrible intonation if you followed it. I positioned mine so it was 2x the distance from the nut to the 12th fret and it was fine. Lots of info on the internet on this placement.; they could have provided a reference line for where to position the fretboard near the headstock rather than just saying provide 5mm space for the nut; to string the nut, it says to tie a knot in the end of the string but, on both ukes, the C string pulled through. Probably should do the loop and twist method on all which is what I ended up doing. Much more stable tuning.

Overall - they look good, sound ok but tuning stability is iffy. Instructions could be greatly improved. If I bought another kit and it was done reasonably well, I would be able to do a much better job knowing what I know now. Wish I could post photos here since they do look nice.

I like the idea of building your own ukulele but.....the quality is not that great though and expected the parts to fit better out if the box. The fretboard did not fit onto the neck properly. The fretboard was much thinner, so I had to work on the neck a lot to make it fit propetly. Tuners could be better, I ended up using replacement tuners. But for the price, a very nice activity to do with my kids.....we enjoyed putting this together.