Harley Benton CST-24 DLX mods and upgrades

This is a beautiful PRS style copy by Harley Benton at a fraction of the cost.

I was looking for a PRS looking guitar and found this guitar at the official Harley Benton source,  Thomann of course!

This is the CST-24 Black Cherry Flame Deluxe model with Rosewell Alnico5 humbucker pickups and a set-in neck joint!

The guitar was fine right out of the box but I wanted to customize it and set it up to my liking of course.

Here are the specifications of this guitar:

• 
  
  Body: Mahogany
• Arched top: Flamed maple
• Set-in mahogany neck
• Fretboard: "Roasted" jatoba
• Neck profile: C
• Fretboard radius: 350 mm
• 24 Frets
• Fretboard inlays: Pearloid dots
• Neck and body binding
• Scale: 635 mm
• Nut width: 42 mm
• Graphite nut
• Pickup: 2 Roswell HAF AlNiCo-5 open coil humbuckers
• 3-Way switch
• 1 Volume and 1 tone control with push / pull function for coil split
• DLX chrome hardware
• DLX GTB wrap-over bridge
• DLX machine heads
• Ex-factory stringing: D'Addario EXL-110 .010 - .046
• Color: Black Cherry Flame

Thomann link for the current model:

https://www.thomann.de/de/harley_benton_cst_24_black_cherry_flame_dlx.htm

First impressions before the mods:

The fist thing I did when I unboxed the guitar was to check it for any visible issues, check its neck relief action and also the action.

Action:

The setup was Ok despite the action being a bit higher than I would personally prefer. It was set to about 2mm on each side of the 12th fret but still normal and under the manufacturer's specs:

https://www.thomann.de/gb/onlineexpert_page_guitar_care_string_action.html

You can read more about guitar action measurements at:

https://www.guitaranswerguy.com/guitar-action-good-string-height/

I lowered the string action to about 1.5mm for extra comfort, without any issues.

Fret polishing

The sides of the frets were smooth but the the tops needed a bit of polishing. 

Polishing the fret tops with some polishing pads or rubber while using a fret guard to protect the fretboard was not hard at all:

https://youtu.be/BA7XUd4yjVs

The nut

Also, the B string was dragging and clicking a bit on the nut. For this price, I cannot complain though. I run a pencil across the nut slots which solved the clicking issue and improved tuning stability a lot:

https://youtu.be/baWDXgTWlfI

I also stretched the strings to render the tuning really stable:

https://youtu.be/2oNjus6iAUA

The electronics worked beautifully and the tone had a nice and mellow midrange to it.

The guitar has been set up in standard E-tuning with 10-46 D'Addario strings from the factory but I prefer Ernie Balls to be honest.

The guitar is now highly playable, with low action. It also has a wrap-around bridge for tuning stability.

The electronics

The electronics worked beautifully and the tone had a nice and mellow midrange to it. The pickups both split into single coils for extra tonal options!

Video demo of the guitar:  https://youtu.be/ayY_jApPqmI 

Let the mods begin!

The humbuckers were at first replaced with a set of nickel covered Roswell LAF pickups. The difference was not huge but the covered pickups sounded a bit more mellow with less bighting treble and less low end. I think the main tonal difference was due to the covers and different distance of the pickup bobbins from the strings. I liked the covered pickups a bit better on the guitar for some Santana-inspired tones. Nothing wrong with the open coils though.

https://roswellpickups.com/product-category/guitar/

More mods!

I wanted to see if replacing the pickups to something way different would make a huge tonal difference.

I have therefore installed a custom handmade set of very special SALAY pickups on the guitar. The neck pickup is an AlNiCo-V P90 style pickup with a frame and the bridge pickup is an AlNiCo-V mini humbucker. These pickups are very special and all hand-made. They sounded really awesome on this guitar. Suddenly, it was like the treble was turned to 11 and the midrange was still there, apparent. The custom set costs maybe more than the guitar itself but it was a good experiment. I wanted to test this set on a more affordable guitar just to see how much of a difference a set of pickups can make on a guitar that does not have the most exotic wood and therefore does not cost thousands. I was positively surprised. 

Although handmade pickups used to very expensive in the past, there are affordable options currently online. A search around eBay and Reverb will get you across some affordable yet decent hand-wound pickups.

Conclusion:

Harley Benton guitar of this price range are decent and I would recommend them to people that wish to buy a guitar for their home studio or to experiment with a new guitar shape they are not familiar with. A bit of TLC, work and some minor upgrades can get you a really decent guitar at a low price. You do not have to replace the pickups to something handmade of course. The stock pickups are actually way better than most stock pickups of well known guitar brands at the same price point.  Even if something is wrong with your guitar, bear in mind that Thomann offers a 3-year world-wide warranty on these guitars! The risk is therefore even lower when you buy an HB guitar new from the Thomann store.

Cheers,

Thanos