Harley Benton CST-24T Black Cherry Flame Reviews

Excellent.

Excellent. That's all I can say.

My favourite

Can’t put this guitar up all my other guitars haven’t come out of their case since receiving this beauty.

How do you do it ?

Tonnes of quality in this guitar for very little money,

Excellent choice.

What A Guitar

I have owned High End PRS Guitars so, had to try this model.

Fantastic Guitar, in all aspects, finish, set up, comfort, balance, sound quality, playability, neck comfort.... It's all there for a 20th of the cost of a PRS... The Buyer will not be disappointed.

Outstanding

I ordered this to the States and that was the first concern was it getting here in one piece. It arrived in perfect shape so that concern was over. After a little set up and string change to my preferred strings this thing sings. I love that it has the P*s kinda look but isn't all together trying to be exactly like the P*s. It's got it's own thing and pulls it off elegantly. I was expecting a just slightly less quality version of what the guitar is based on from the hundreds of reviews I watched before ordering this since I couldn't be there in Germany to actually pick one up and play it for myself. The humbucker option is smooth and highly useful and I'm super surprised at the single coil split. Most guitars struggle with getting that right. Even the Prs's but I actually get it right on with this guitar. I have a couple of Strats and the CST24t nails that single coil sound. At least it seems to for me with my amp set up. Nice option. I won't have to bring 2 or 3 guitars to a gig. Bring this one and do a simple toggle switch and/or pick up split and I'm there. I'm Major picky about tone and feel so it nails both those departments for me. I can also say this is the very first guitar with jumbo medium frets that I actually like with these frets. I was going to have them brought down by a really good Luther I know here when I got it but cancelled that plan. It's weird how I definitely feel the frets predominantly over the wood from the fret board and I usually like feeling closer to the fret board itself but this feels natural enough as is and it takes me in new directions which I really like. I could go on about this guitar but that'd make this review really long. Just beautiful finish. Pretty flawless on this specimen. It doesn't make you want to stop buying Prs's. I have a Prs and plan to buy another one. If anything it makes me want to buy more Prs's and Harley's. I got a couple more Harley's picked out too now that I see they're level of quality. Be back soon;-)

Looks great, feels great and sounds great.

The setup is perfect and it stays in tune well. I haven’t played with the tremolo yet.Color is a brighter cherry red with some orange shining through at certain angles. The Fretboard does have tiny pits or cracks in it that I assume is a natural characteristic of the wood used. My daughters Strat with an Indian laurel fretboard has the same tiny cracks. It doesn’t affect the feel at all. The body is two pieces and the neck is 4 pieces. I bought this guitar for my daughter and she loves it. I will definitely buy another Harley Benton for myself.

Always wanted a PRS but

Couldn't afford them. This is a great compromise. Played well out of the box and pickups have a nice tone. I may replace them with Gibsons or DiMarzio down the road, but it stands up to clean and distortion tones. The bookmatch is a little off center, but hey it still a beautiful guitar. The pull knob was an unexpected surprise, very cool.

extremely dry and cracked fretboard and light orange fretboard instead of dark brown

Please, don't follow pictures or videos about this guitar.

After 6 weeks of waiting, I received this guitar FULL OF BIG CRACKS on the fretboard and with a light orange colour.

After complaining about it. The answer I received was that it is normal to have "small cracks" on this wood and that the colour was just my perception.

So be careful with this guitar or you could just waste your time like me as I wasn't offered replacement or compensation at all

HB CST-24T

Very impressed with this guitar. The Fretwork was fantastic, playability is superb, and it is a beautiful instrument. Definitely will buy from them again.

anywhere near the pictures

avoiding any shipping delays and poor customer service this guitar is anywhere near from what the pictures show, the build quality is really poor, intonation is required every 5 mins. Still this guitar has potential as a building project, specially for its versatility due to the coil splitting pickups.

HB CST-24T black cherry

Bought this guitar because of the praising reviews on the internet and I must say I am really impressed buy this ¤222 guitar.

The body has some minor laquer flaws at the binding and on the high frets there are 3 or 4 fret ends which are not filed down. Filed these frets myself, no big deal.

Pick-up rings were gaping a little, screws were tightened too much and the srew holes in the rings were slightly too small. Used a drill to open them a bit more.

Body:

- nice weight

- neck profile ok

The hardware:

- the Wilkinson trem works really well

- tuners are nothing special, I would have liked locking ones.

- pots work fine, again nothing special

Pickups are the Roswell ones, I like the sound: no muddiness, clearly defined, mid/high gain output. Coil split works really nice and cleans up the sound, though you lose a little volume.

All in all I am impressed by this HB, it looks, sounds and plays really nice. My favourite guitar used to be my heavily modded Epi LP, but now the HB is my go to one.

I am satisfied

A few visual flaws. Microscratches on the clearcoat. But it plays like a dream. At least, after setting up. The action was too high but could be adjusted by a turn and a half. The trem needed some adjusting too. frets were good. intonation was spot on.

Best VFM guitar!

I am very impressed with this instrument!

A nice, versatile guitar!

The knobs have a great feeling and they are smooth and responsive!

No neck dive.

Pickups are a liitle too dirty for my taste.

But overall, too much guitar for the money!

Well worth the money

Although I wouldn't say it is a PRS clone as far as sound, it is still a very high quality guitar with the ability to get a lot of different tones. The neck is SUPER easy to play.

Excellent guitar for the price

This is the second CST-24T I have bought. The first was a blue one but I sold it after a while because I wasn't really happy with the pickups and didn't want to spend much more upgrading a ¤222 guitar.

Learned recently that they changed the pickups to Roswells and read good reviews so took a chance on another one.

Definitely a score. Beautiful guitar and the pickups are lovely. No urge to 'fix' anything....well, not much anyway. These pickups to my ear are very similar to the Duncan Jazz/JB set....no bad thing. The coilsplit sound is typically thin and weedy....half a humbucker is NOT a good singlecoil...so I wired in a resistor (about 4Kohm) in the grounding wire and now you get one and a half coils, sort of, when split which sounds better. This is easy and cheap and should be standard practice when they wire up a guitar in the factory.

The guitar arrived amazingly well setup for a budget guitar. Frets were nice and smooth. I've had new Gibson's that were worse. It was even intonated properly! But as I'm fussy and do guitar setups a lot anyway I gave it another gentle fret polish and worked on the nut and vibrato. Lemon oiled the fretboard. It wouldn't stay in tune very well out of the box but after smoothing and lubing fretslots and adjusting screws and stuff the vibrato works great and stays in tune really well. Plays great now.

The workmanship and finish is REALLY

good. My girlfriend even wants to have the guitar hanging in the sitting room so she can look at it! Love the deep red and black finish.

The only negative I have with this guitar....and other Harley Bentons I've bought...is the weight. Way too heavy. Not a huge issue with me this time as I own other lighter guitars to use onstage and will just use this one sitting down, but I would've preferred it to be less heavy.

Harley Benton should sort this issue out and get a supply of less dense timber for their products.

But other than that I'm very pleased with the guitar and would recommend it.

Amazed!

Considering the price of the guitar, it is really good! The build quality on the guitar is really good! The sound is also good, and with the push and pull switch is really nice and gives a lot of versatility. I was also amazed by how it does not go out of tune when using the whammy bar. Really good guitar and it also looks amazing! Recommended!

Edit: I have been using the guitar for a week, and I have noticed that the fret ends stick out a little bit and scratch my thumb. Not that big of a deal but still, I have to remove a star from quality!

OUTSTANDING

I had a PRS SE Custom 24 that I had issues with, it wouldn't stay in tune even after putting £100 schaller locking heads on it. So I took it back to the store and I thought I would give this a bash after reading such good reviews. Man was I surprised, It's just incredible. Great sustain, play-ability, option of coil tap for versatility with tone. Stays in tune wonderfully, the pick ups sound mean for the price range. The quality of wood used for the body and neck and overall it's a great instrument, especially for this price. I'd say it's on par with my Gibson Les Paul Studio which was 4 times the price. Overall highly recommend for beginner to advanced level of playing, buy one and you'll see for yourself!

Great Guitar

This is a very good guitar for the price. It came in setup quite well. Just had to do some minor adjustment to suit my taste.

The finish is good, with some minor paint imperfections barely noticeable. The fret-board required a good cleanup & oiling though as it was dusty and dry. The flame maple veneer is gorgeous.

All the electronics worked perfectly well. The coil tap feature is very good and provides a wide variety of tones. The pickups are surprisingly very good and versatile. I don't have any intention of swapping them anytime soon.

The tremolo stays in tune after moderate use. However, if you go crazy it goes out of tune just by a little bit. The machine heads, on the other hand, is not of very good quality as there's some play to it.

Overall I would recommend this guitar to anyone who's looking for a budget instrument as it is unbeatable in this price range.

Great semi-pro instrument

The Harley Benton CST-2T is my first ever HB, but definitely not my last.

After watching some reviews on YouTube, I expected this to sound a feel great. And I can honestly say I wasn't disappointed.

The pickups deliver a great clean tone eve through my digital Roland Cube, except for the bridge pickup on itself. When you start to add some distortion, it sounds just great. For my surprise, the Black Cherry Flame model came with coil split, which is...enjoyable.

Intonation-wise, the guitar came with a very low action and nearly perfect intonation. The tuners are very precise and hold tuning quite well, even when you start using the tremolo.

Finally, the guitar looks great with the flamed maple top, and very close to an actual PRS .

This guitar would be recommended for those who want a good guitar - enough for small gigs - with a short budget.

So I definitely recommend this product from Harley Benton, which comes at a very affordable price and a great shipping quality.

Pros: Looks; Sound; Intonation; Price

Cons: Heavy Weight(for someone who?s used to a strat); some ? rare - detunning caused by heavy use of the tremolo.

Incredible value

I have owned this guitar for 2 weeks now. I use it at church and at home. I have no "Cons" but I have many "Pros": It stays in tune, It sounds bright and clear, it pushes my amp into "Breakup" really easily.....I like that a lot! The fret board feels great. Its very easy to play. It arrived to me in California (5,600 miles away) in tune and with correct intonation and the string action in just right! And just look at it..........its gorgeous! You cannot beat this guitar for the price. Even other guitars at twice the price can't compete with this one!