r/harleybenton

Swapped neck from a spare ST-62MN SB Vintage Series

Installed luminous stickers over the dots and sidedots (very cheap dots but they actually have a nice glow)

Drilled the tuner holes to fit modern black ones

Shielded all cavities with copper and sanded down the non conductive paint on the bridge

Installed creme Aliexpress pickups (neck pickup seems like a bridge spacing but since it's half bladed I don't mind)

Replaced the broken battery cover with a custom 3D printed blank

Harley Benton 7 BBB
New gear day

Not entirely satisfied with the Roswell pickups, which sound very good but a little too modern for my taste, I replaced them with some Tonerider alnico 4 classic pickups. I still have to test them out thoroughly, but so far I'm very satisfied, especially with the crunch sounds. The (reverse) zebra color scheme is also a perfect fit with black fusion T.

My 2019 CST-24 was originally blue, but the colour gradually faded to green on the front and a horrible green-brown on the back. So it was time for a refinish. I also top the opportunity to add wood so I could carve out the control recesses and move the tuners into more direct pull position. Oh and fit a scooped input jack directly in the side.

Plan is to do the top of the body and headstock butterscotch and keep the rest natural then seal with a clear coat. Will post an update when I have some progress with it!

Hi! Last time, I posted my Tele with a swapped black pickguard (laser-cut from plexiglass). Today, I'd like to share a few thoughts on my latest modifications.

I've read that the grounding on this guitar is usually pretty bad, partly because the bridge isn't sanded underneath, which stops the ground wire from making a good connection. However, on my guitar (bought in December 2025), this sanding was already done from the factory! Even so, I went ahead and shielded the entire guitar with copper tape, and the result is amazing!

Under my last post, some people also advised swapping the factory 250k pots for 500k ones. Surprisingly, my guitar already came with 500k pots! I decided to replace them anyway so I could wire up a coil split. The pickups you can see on the guitar are ceramic Fleors from AliExpress, and honestly, I feel like they sound almost exactly like the stock ones.

Overall, doing all these modifications was a ton of fun and a great learning experience. It didn't cost much at all, and it's definitely worth tinkering a bit with your cheap guitars!

I get the feeling that at some point during the production of the TE-20HH, they started introducing these upgrades like sanding the bridge for better grounding, upgrading to 500k pots, and changing the pickguard mounting holes.

Since Thomann bought Höfner, I feel like it may affect this model as it is a copy of Höfner basses.

They might just stop selling it so people buy the Höfner instead. They could slap the Höfner name on it to sell more of it (Though that'd just be the Ignition line but cheaper, unless they raise the price too). They could change the design to be closer since they don't need to worry about copyright anymore. Or maybe nothing will change.