Harley Benton CST-24 Black Cherry Flame DLX 4-stars Reviews

Great value for money

No quality concerns or flaws that I have found. Looks and feels lovely. Needed some setup after delivery. Excellent guitar for this price, bettering cheaper lines from better-known manufacturers. Wrap-around bridge would not adjust to get intonation right - I will swap this for a Gotoh 510. Very hot pickups, seem OK.

Really nice feel

I've owned this model for quite a while now. The neck is a really nice slim c that feels great.

The intonation and wrap around bridge are spot on. So nice for palm muting.

I enjoy it so much I've upgraded with locking tuners and a seymour duncan invader in the bridge for higher gain play.

The stock pickups are OK. I left the neck in place for warmer tones. However if you want a high gain monster I wouldn't say it's the right fit. Some people say they're a bit too muddy.

Quality has been perfect. I have no issues at all with any of the wiring or pots. Rolling back volume feels resonsive.

Pickup change was a breeze.

The top is so nice I often catch myself staring at it across the room while watching TV.

I love this guitar and it has fueled me to sell the PRS I owned that was almost the same guitar.

I now have another Harley Benton on the way thanks to the very good quality and enjoyable experience I've had with this one.

A great budget beginner with so much modding potential.

I'm in Canada and after everything was said and done the price was about $375

So much better than a squire bullet or infinity to me. Just buy one

Beautiful looking guitar

Slight buzzing off strings, nothing that can't be fixed.

Happy with Purchase

I was expecting the guitar to be darker with the color of Black Cherry Flame. It is much lighter in color but has become one of my go to guitars. Pleased with overall quality and function.

Great guitar

The overall finish was much better than I expected. I needed to tweak the action a little to suit me but very playable out of the box. A really great piece of kit. I will definitely be back for more!

Fantastic Value

This is the first electric guitar I have bought and checked out a lot of online reviews to decide that Harley Benton was where I wanted to start. I was not disappointed. Obviously quality has a few issues, but came well set up out of the box. Made a couple adjustments to action and lubricated the nut and it was good to go. Not sure about the exact terminology but it feels like the Low E string is a little closer to the edge of the neck (it doesn't take much for it to accidentally slip off the neck when playing) may just be my lack of practice or due to narrow neck. Not sure but I love the versatility and for the price it is an excellent value in my mind.

Great look good playability

For the cost very good value. Neck is slim and easily playable. Pick up response is fine and the addition of splitting the pick/coil tapping adds variety to the tones available.

Impressed!

First time I've ever bought a guitar without trying it out first. For the money I don't think anything can compare. I've owned dozens of guitars including a lot of high end vintage instruments. Right out of the box this thing was ready to play. Action, intonation, neck, frets were all fine, didn't have to adjust anything which is rare. I managed a music store for several years and almost all the guitars we got in had to to be professionally set up. Pickups and electronics are also great for the price. If your the guy that is gonna be picky about finish imperfections such as a few places on the binding where you can see some bleeding of the color from the wood stain, which was just a couple on my instrument, then maybe you gotta complaint. The tuners are a little stiff but work fine, no slipping. I've played many guitars at a much higher price bracket that didn't compare. My first Harley Benton, but definitely not my last. UPDATE: So i've had the guitar for around three months or so and I have decided that I will upgrade the tuners. They seemed to work fine at first but now I'm starting to notice like dead spots or jumping up or down all of a sudden when I'm trying to tune. Haven't had any other issues thus far and I play almost every day. UPDATE... Started have a little problem with keeping in tune when doing a lot of bends. Switched the nut for a bone one, problem solved. Not a big issue for me but if your gonna have to pay someone to do this for you it's something you should consider. It still remains one of my regular players and one of my favorites.

very affordable prs-type guitar

In general, it is a very well-built guitar for 1/5 of a price of an original custom SE 24 model - that was the main reason for me to try this instrument.

Out-of-the-box it wasn't absolutely flawless. Frets were not polished, several frets had relatevely deep notches, obstructing from bending the high E-string, seemed like someone on the factory in Vietnam levelled the frets by a hammer after the strings had been attached;-) Lacquer on the back side of the neck also was't perfectly polished with some hand prints on it. Fretboard was absolutely dry with spots of glue here and there... So before plugging the guitar into my amp I had to spend a several hours polishing frets, sanding and lemonoilng the fretbord.

Anyway, overall build quality of the guitar body and neck is really good, its nice to hold it in your hands. The body is just beautiful, the guitar is considerably lighter than a full-body LPs, all frets access is easy, neck is quite slim and narrow compared to mentioned above prs SE, very playable, I should say. Tuners are OK, they do the job.

If you decide to buy this guitar pay attention to a very 'specific' prs-type bridge setup: before you try to adjust string action by large coin-slot bolts be sure you fully unscrew small black mensuration-setup screws! And by the way you can't properly setup the action before you complete your scale length setup - when you move the bridge the string action changes. So the whole procedure of of setting up this guitar can take an hour of your precious time.

Pickups are not an absolute junk, they are quite decent, but sound a bit weak compared to traditional Dimarzio or SD humbackers, and for sure, being coil-splitted do not sound like real single-coils. The guitar gives you a lot of different intonations, a lot of room for experiments, but you can't substitute a LP and a Strat by this one guitar.

To wrap it up, its a great value-for-money guitar, reasonably priced - not only for beginners, with no real competition in its price rage. Just keep in mind its price and your expectations will be met when you receive it :-)

CST-24 good for the money

Good looking guitar. Fine neck profile. Comes setup for low action. Split coil feature adds more noise than I expected, but the humbuckers work well. Great body contour. Holds tune well so far. One bridge set screw was missing and the other bridge set screw was slightly cross-threaded. I immediately replaced those screws with 4M x 8mm stainless steel screws obtained locally. The neck pickup seemed loose in the frame, but the bridge pickup is solid. I may have to contour the pickup pole pieces to match the fret radius after I determine the individual string response, but I have to play the instrument a while longer.

great sound but needs some work

I bought a few CST guitars and all have somethings in common :

1 They need some work

Fret-jobs and polishing for instance

2. They play amazing and sound fantastic after some work

If you are willing and able to put in some work the CST guitars compare to any PRS I have played so far.

maybe not in quality of used parts and finish but in playability and sound