Harley Benton Standard Series set up

Описание: A local lady Katie contacted me asking if I had any guitars for sale for her 12yr old daughter. I invited them to visit to talk about what kind of guitar she was interested in playing... Emily was used to playing classical guitars in school but was drawn to the idea of an electric guitar - so I put them on to Harley Benton for a small-budget guitar that would set up really well and compete with more expensive models. They chose a Standard Series HSS strat in matt black as part of a bundle with comprising guitar, amp, strap, gig bag, tuner, lead and a bag of picks of various sizes.
The guitar came to me direct from Thomann and my first job was to make sure it was 'acceptable' from a delivery point of view i.e. if there were any excessive flaws, I would 'reject' it and dispatch it back to Thomann for either a refund or replacement. That's one of the benefits of buying new from a large retailer: they're obliged to supply you a guitar in good, working condition and you can call them on it until they do.
As it happens, the guitar came out of the box unplayable due to very high action - and my initial concern was 'can I lower this far enough with these saddles to reach a playable height of action?'. The answer was "Just about". It was close - and had I NOT being able to get the right action ie. had the saddles decked out with nowhere else to go, then I would have preferred a replacement than to shim the neck from the outset. That of course is based on the assumption that another unit would have a better geometry than this one - but there's simply no guarantee of that.
Once I'd set the action to where I wanted it, it became obvious that there were some clear buzzing notes on the high E plus a lot of 'fret slap' on the fatter wound strings. But I had confidence that the Banana method of levelling would take care of those.
Despite that, it's nearly a QC fail from my perspective. Imagine 12yr old Emily taking this guitar out of the box and attempting to play it as it came. She wouldn't know how to lower the action but even if she DID then she'd be rewarded with a dead note on fret 9 of the high E spoiling the fun. What then? She'd have to go back up in action height to overcome it. And struggle with that high action.
Another issue was that with the action set where I wanted it, there was almost no 1st fret action left from the nut. On a plus side, the nut looked like a Tusq nut already fitted (I'm sure it can't be, must be a Thomann variant)...but with the very high last fret action they'd somehow managed (rare occurrence!) to start out with the 1st fret action being quite good. The problem of course, is that the substantial lowering I did of the last fret action also reduced the 1st fret down to a level that I consider 'marginal'.
I decided to continue - with the intention to try to keep the cost down for Katie and, if at all possible, retain and use that original nut.
The precision fret levelling shows me freeing up that dead note on the high E (number 9) and explained why it was the way it was. That's very rewarding to see happen in real time on video.
Once the frets were levelled and I had decided that the first fret action was just workable, the rest of the set up was straightforward.