TE-20MN CA Standard Series : Great guitar for the price

I've been playing guitar as a hobby for over 35 years but somehow Telecasters were never on my radar- I don't know why but they didn't really appeal to me. My opinion changed a few months ago when I played a Tele for the first time and quickly realised that I had to have one.

Given that I already own several guitars, I didn't want to spend a fortune. My instinct was to go for a Squier Affinity, however I kept reading good things about Harley Benton so I decided to give this a try.

I'm so glad I did, because in my opinion this is actually better. It feels a bit more substantial (especially at the neck), and it has the classic 3 saddle bridge (with Squier you only get this on the top of the range Classic Vibe models). It's also a lot cheaper!

The metallic red finish looks really good, and I love the maple fretboard. It feels good to play and there are no rough edges. In terms of sound, it performs well. The neck pick-up has a nice warm tone while the bridge pickup has a lot of bite and produces some great 'crunch' sounds.

The guitar was received surprisingly well set-up: the intonation was perfect, the action reasonably low (most cheaper guitars have very high & badly cut nuts, but this looked really good) and there was no need for truss rod adjustments.

Tuning stability was great for the first few weeks. Now it needs daily tweaking but I suspect that this might be due to the ageing stock strings which feel very flimsy indeed.

The only issue I had was that the pickup selector stopped working on first use. Removing the control panel, I noticed that the rear of the switch was covered in a powder-like substance. Blowing this away solved the problem.

For the price I'd say this is a very good buy indeed. Obviously it's not in the same league as a Fender, but for an amateur like myself with multiple guitars it's an excellent choice.