Harley Benton CST-24HB Tortoise Flame 5-stars Reviews

Fantastic guitar for the money

I bought this guitar as an alternative to my telecaster, didn't want to spend to much but wanted something with humbuckers and a hollow body. Always wanted a PRS but for the money I had to spend it was not an option this guitar filled the gap perfectly. Neck profile is comfortable and there were no jagged fret wire, pickups are good but leave a little more to be desired and the addition of coil splitting is nice and gives the guitar some different tonal possibilities. For the price you'd be hard pressed to find better value for your money. I have handed this guitar to all of my fellow guitar playing friends and they all seem to over estimate the price and are blown away by the quality and sound of the instrument for the price.

Pros:

- sounds great with well rounded tone from both pick ups

- looks great

- plays great

- great value for money

cons:

- some very minor imperfections with the finish and painting of the inside of the body

Great guitar ...but

This is a great guitar for the money. Mine did require some fretwork to knock down some high frets. I replaced the metal knobs with gold Epiphone fluted speed knobs. I think the aluminium bridge lets this guitar down. The aluminium fad is i think a mistake, you need more mass in the bridge on a wrap over stop bar design. I replaced the bridge with a similar but heavier Wilkinson bridge. Even though this is die-cast zinc alloy, not brass or steel, I think it sounds better.

Quality Guitar!

This guitar would still be quality if they charged twice the price!

Finish was slightly different to the photos, more of a sunburst than the dark wood shown. Apart from that, I have nothing else bad to say about it.

Does not feel cheap in the slightest, great build, great neck and nice rich pickups.

A great living room guitar as it looks fab just sitting there and due to it being semi-acoustic, you can just pick it up and fiddle at any time.

Best Harley Benton I have bought by far. Now if only they would make some Thinline tele type guitars in a more classic style.

AMAZING!!!

I own 25 guitars Gibson, Fender, Takamine, Taylor, US, Mex, Far-east and self made.......and I can say that for the price this guitar is amazing..... Maybe I got a lucky one..... but I have not found any, even tiny, flow. I personal think that also the pickups are great, very close to my LP. The feeling of the neck resemble a Gibson SG, but without that weird feeling of a "far" neck. The PRS body shape is very comfortable and the action is perfect, fretwork perfect. The tuners are not the top, but they are doing their job. If I would like to make it perfect, I would change: tuners, pickups, nut and electronics based on pickup selection. You can't find anything on the market with this quality at this price point.

I love this guitar!

I had been looking for a semi hollow body with this shape and the companies i knew of were all outrageous in price. A friend recieved a different model HB and it looked fantastic so I went online to check them out and found this model, exactley what I had been looking for. So I had a little extra money and for the price of this guitar I was willing to take a chance. Let me tell you that I love this guitar. This guitar fits my style and is beautiful and stunning to look at, this guitar has brilliant tones with much diversity with the coil splitting option, the neck feels good to me and I can play all over this guitar and neck. I will be ordering another HB and these guitars will be my main gigging guitars and maybe sell some of the other guitars I have if i can bring myself to letting them go. I think I found what I have been looking for:)

Value and Tone Machine

After 40 years of playing guitar professionally and as a hobbyist I've owned well over 75 electric guitars. From the very top to the middle of the pack. I was intrigued by the online demos and reviews of Harley Benton guitars. I decided to pull the trigger and buy the CST-24HB. I was nervous that the trip over to the States would damage the guitar but when it arrived, the outer box was perfect as was the inner box. The guitar was set up nicely. No buzz and just the right amount of neck relief and string action. I fine tuned the tuning and plugged it in to my tube amp and the town was great. I couldn't put this down for at least an hour. Great feel, great tone, great value. I would definitely use this at a jam. I'm proud to own this guitar and to show it off. It was my first Harley Benton. It will certainly not be my last.

Simply cannot be beaten for price!

This guitar is fantastic as the action was very good, and straight out of the box was almost ready to go. the finish was stunning and couldnt flaw it, the body was lovely the wood looks amazing. If you are on the fence about buying this, just go for it because you wont regret it.

Amazing

Such a great guitar, love it to pieces.

Great guitar, not only for the price

It's a great guitar, and not only for its price range.

The real difference between this and other products in the range is in the feeling.

It feels exactly as a really good guitar should feel.

I'm very impressed about this.

Sounds good, action was a bit high but very easily tuned up to my preferences.

Take in mind that the wood needs a copule og weeks to adjust properly, so be quiet if you buy one, wait a bit and then run your adjustments.

Oh, my guitar has a push/pull tone knob which splits humbuckers. Very cool feature that was not mentioned in the description.

The color is brighter than in the photo here, it looks quite similar to a "desert burst" or a "violin burst".

Anyway the quality is stunning.

Go for it, for this price you really can't find anything better!

Such tone, such sustain...

I've had my CST-24HB now for three months or so, and really have got very comfortable with it.

It looks just wonderful, with a superb finish, god - how do they do it for the price is beyond me!

But what I REALLY love about this guitar is the stunning tone and outstanding sustain it gives.

If you are a lover of that Les Paul tone and sustain then you really MUST add this guitar to your collection.

At first I found the length of neck strange (I have a number of Epiphones) but after a short while I settled into the smoothness of the guitar without a worry.

Great guitar, great finish, great tone, great sustain.

Get one!

My new opinion on Guitars

Well I've always been a Gibson and Fender guy. Looked down on the cheaper guitars. Wow how that's changed.

After the guy on YouTube reviewing these Harleys. I purchased this on. Quality , set up, playability, tone wow, its amazing.

From here I've sold my more expensive guitars including my fender and Gibson. I now have purchased 7 of these different Harley Benton guitars, 2 x lps, Prs copys. all for the price of one of my Higher end Guitars.

Cant recommend these guitars enough. Don't think il ever buy another £2000 guitar again, I do own a Martin Acoustic which I love to bits , but have ordered the CLD D-41 Harley Benton, mmmm just curious how this compares to my Martin, That will take some beating.

excellent guitar.

My dream guitar is the much expensive brand name guitar that this is modelled after. But not being able to justify that much money as i make no money from playing i looked for a more accessible alternative. After reading many many reviews and review videos of the Harley Benton CST-24HB Tortoise Flame and seeing the great value price i had to give it a go.

The package was delivered promptly and safely packaged.

Out of the box the guitar was well set up and i just had to do a few personal tweaks. The quality is great and solid quality components have been used. I personally added a set of Harley Benton Parts SC-Style Speedknob AM and set up 2 micro switches so i can switch each pickup between humbucking mode and single coil, the Wilkinson MWCHB pickups that come fitted are suitable for coil splitting and i spent £5 on the 2 switches. (this is why i dropped 1 star in features as it could be done at the point of manufacture at minimal extra cost)

This guitar is such a bargain, well built nicely finished and has a great variety of tones (even before my personal mods) it is the price of a quality starter guitar but would stand up against many pro guitars in looks sounds and quality.

Beautiful guitar for excellent price

Purchased product to add to small collection of not so expensive guitars for home use (also purchased the SC-450 P90 GT).

Build quality excellent. Beautiful split grain top with a finish free of any imperfections (no scratches, etc.). Nice single piece back. Nicely matched three piece neck. Bindings nicely finished on top body edge and sound holes. Somewhat unusual inlays on fret board. Frets nicely finished with no sharp edges. Neck and fret board feel very nice. Only one flaw; the lacquer appears to have run a little on the lower cutaway, leaving a noticeable ridge. Not a big issue but could have been avoided.

Machine heads turn smoothly, as do volume and tone controls. Pickup switch has good feel.

Action very good. Intonation needed adjusting. Had to use most of the range of motion on the set screw located in the end of the wrap around bridge/tail piece to adjust intonation on low E. Should be ok, although the slot on the bridge/tail piece is now visible along with the set screw. The bridge/tail piece could have been more accurately positioned. Proper upward bow on neck and no truss rod adjustment required.

Humbucker pickups sound very good. No fret buss. Holds tuning well.

Beautiful guitar for excellent price. Highly recommended.

First Harley Benton

Ordered this guitar December 4 2015 and showed up today December 23 2015, quite a bit longer then they said but arrived here in Canada. The box looked like someone used as a football but the guitar was fine. Looks awesome and the setup is great. For the price these are hard to beat !

Very good for the money

I had a look online at a few reviews of this which said the center line may not line up and that there were a few flaws here and there.

Mine turned up and i was very pleased to find that this was not the case, its nigh on perfect the finish is fantastic, so much so that against a custom se 24 prs its hard to tell the difference. yes it doesnt feel quite as good in the hands but thats only if being fussy and doesnt feel any more than about £50-£100 less let alone £400-£500 less.

Sound is very good i was thinking about changing the pickups when i got it but ill be leaving them alone, sounds nice clean and very nice dirty!

Unbelievable value for money

This is hands-down the best guitar deal I have ever made. Considering the quality of the build and the finish I would expect an instrument like this to be priced in the range from 800 to 1,000 Euros and yet I paid only a quarter of that.

Harley Benton CST-24HB Tortoise Flame, It's a no brainer, Get one!

You will open the package and think, "Why, for so little money?".

Inspect it and its flawless to such a degree that you think why buy a Smith?

So, after wiping my drool of this thing, I played her unplugged for a while, nice feeling, fret ends smooth, came almost in tune. The action felt slightly higher but thats adjustable, may stick with this tho as she plays great out of the box.

Tuners are really good as is the nut, no cheap polymers there :P

Neck feels great, intonation is spot on, waiting for my bubble to burst..... It didn't.

Plugged her in and played and fell in love again. Lovely sounding and the looks made me play more. A few guitars are now gathering dust.

Now to the mojo (bullshit)

The pickups may or may not have a ceramic magnet. Well it's a magnet and a magnetic thing passing through it's field when wrapped in a coil will generate a current. These pickups sound great.

The capacitors aren't paper in oil/orange drop !! A capacitor is a capacitor, simply a battery that stores charge and releases on demand, no mojo there, whatever they are made of.

No CTS pots??? A pot is a variable resistor measured for quality on how many times it can cycle from zero to full without failing.

A wire is insulated against contact with other wires, the old people used cloth, now he have polymers(plastic)

Mojo over

Simply get one and play it, You will be converted.

Astounding!

It would be very easy to describe this guitar as incredible considering the frankly ludicrously small amount of money I paid for it. The fact is that I would still be saying it had it cost 3 or 4 times as much. Beautiful design, very tidy build and a fabulous finish. On top of this it was set up decently straight from the box, plays wonderfully and sounds awesome. I am seriously considering selling all my current guitars and replacing them with the Harley Benton equivalents. I would still have great guitars and be considerably richer.

Harley Benton CST-24HB Tortoise Flame

i purchased this guitar because i dont own a semi-acoustic with humbuckers

and i wanted to try one without spending to much cash.

i was pleasantly surprised upon opening the box,the top was beautiful!,fit and finish

was also perfect, no flaws in the construction of the guitar that i could find.

i would note that this guitar is constructed more like a chambered guitar with fholes

than a true semi-hollow(top and back are solid not laminate) thats is a plus for me.

i installed a set of 9s, gave the truss rod a slight tweak for a little more relief

set the intonation and thats it.

i have been over the moon with this guitar

and i would recommend this guitar to a friend......in fact i already have!