Harley Benton CST-24T Ocean Flame 4-stars Reviews

A little work and it's a jewel!

The Good: Received it 5 days after ordering (2 of them Sat/Sun) in good shape. Beautiful top and neck. The intonation was almost spot on. The Bad: The nut was cut way too high.. Had to take it to my luthier and he fixed that, adjusted the saddles, and slightly re-intonate ($60). It now plays like a $1K guitar, w/ amazing action and feeling and great sustain. The pickups are OK, but I'm sticking a Duncan JB102 and a Jazz in it and that will solve that issue. It's a KEEPER for sure. I'm sure the nut was just that 'bad one' out of the batch. Every other HB guitar I've bought were cut good.

Daily Driver

Moderate weight comparable to a PRS-24 at ~8 pounds. Minor paint bleed/fuzziness on transitions like the faux binding but overall pleased. No humming 😁 this took the place of my strat as my daily driver for it's versatility. Tuners are great. Flame top isn't AAA but it's still quite beautiful. The comparable guitars in the price range are basswood 😅 I don't use the coil split often because it cuts the volume and my sound guy hates me for it

Good guitar for a low price

I have no comments for this price. Unlike some people who don't like this

Roswell pickups, I would say from my experience that they are reasonably good, at least in combination with this guitar they work great.

Great guitars as you probably seen reviews all over the internet

Great guitar the neck is nice the sound is fantastic.

The 2 bad things is that the guitar is a bit heavy and my ocean flame color is nice I thought it is much prettier in realty.

Bottom line for the price - take it and enjoyed it

Unbelievably versatile

I was choosing between Fusion and CST-24, and picked this beauty, since i've been dreaming for PRS for a long time. I guess this one isn't THAT far from PRS. Not flawless though, but the best for the price.

Surprisingly good for the price!

Got this based on the videos online. Wasn't expecting it to be as good as it was. Replaced the pickups, which were fairly easy to do, been playing it ever since. Sounds great, looks beautiful, couldn't ask for much more!

Everyone should own one.

So I have owned this guitar to a number of months now and here is my summary.

I love it! It plays wonderfully!

The fretboard feels good.

The neck has kept its shape.

It stays in tune.

Here is what makes it NOT 5 stars: It is too heavy, not so bad you cant play it but its got weight. I don't love that the white binding turned more cream but its completely fine. The fret ends are clean but not perfect. All and all the best thing in my opinion is that this guitar is amazing!

It is not perfect. It shouldn't be expected to be perfect. But its very, VERY, close!

Good news, and the bad news.

This guitar is beautiful. The neck is great. The Wilkinson tuners and tremolo work function well. If you don't like a neck with a high gloss finish, this might not work for you. Myself, I like it.

Now, for the bad news.

First off, the volume pot didn't work. Turns out the low side connection on the pot was not soldered to ground. Problem fixed.

The guitar just sounded muddy to me. It lacked clarity and brightness. I tried all of the regular tricks, such as playing with pickup height and the value of the tone pot, to no avail. I finally replaced the pickups with some g.m. 59ers, and now the guitar sounds great.

Also, the volume pot is a cheap, dime-sized pot. That I will be replacing. Now, this will probably be my favorite guitar.

Great but missing the finishing touches

Amazing features and sound for the price. where the price is definitely noticed is the setup. The intonation is off, the action is quite high and I have some string buzzing on the A & D string.

Fantastic guitar for the money

I own a lot of guitars in a large range of prices. Some budget guitars just don't give you that pleasure when playing, too many things missing, especially lack of quality in the tone. Some very expensive ones are just what you need, but the price is hefty. This guitar has a great tone but does not break the bank. Great value.

Love the look of this guitar and the SC-550 that I bought. The body on the CST-24T has a couple of spots under the finish where the wood wasn’t smooth and the frets need to be polished on both guitars. Other than that I love these two instruments.

Great guitar for the price, but there was some work needed to be done for it to play decently at lower action.

There was a few dead spots and buzzing so i had to level, crown and polish the frets.

Tuners had jumps and they didn't hold tuning very well (I swapped them for locking ones).

But most problematic was nut, it was poorly slotted, it gripped strings and preventing them from sliding while bending or using tremolo (I had to reshape and properly slot it)

But on the other hand, this guitar is a great foundation for upgrades: solid construction, beautiful aesthetics, stable & comfortable neck, good tremolo, good sounding pickups (mid-output, balanced, organic)...

Okay lets start with Pros :

- mahogany body,

- beautiful finish,

- pickups sound good, they really bite when playing metal but they do have a small bump in bass around 100-150hz. They are versatile enough for clean stuff too,

- neck is straight, frets are even, dots look great, intonation was on spot

- bridge holds the tuning well, even when using tremolo arm it was in tune for quite some time

- tuning pegs are okay but locking tuners are a must when using tremolo bridge

- split coil works like a charm

Cons

- roseacer is really dry and ugly looking to me (no wood grain at all) needs some love like lemon oil and polishing

- small chunk of wood missing on 13th fret

- sharp fret ends

- small fret buzz

- guitar is too heavy, l know it's a PRS copy but they could make 'em slimmer and lighter

- tuners are okay, but tremolo will detune guitar after some heavy use

- small crack on headstock too (transportation probably)

Can't be beat for the price.

For modern metal and rock tones this thing is fantastic, for anything else I've not really tried it.

I'll start with the pros - Fretwork is good, fret ends are a little rough but all are well rounded and no dead spots anywhere on the neck.

Pickups - if I never knew they were wilkinson I'd say they sounded like a SD JB/Jazz combo.

Bridge - comfortable, intonated perfectly out of the box.

Tuners - I'd probably pay ~£100 for these alone, far superior to quite a few branded tuners I have on other much higher spec'd/priced guitars.

Now the negatives.

Finish - a few spots of uneven staining, rough binding in spots and a few marks on the fretboard.

All in all would pay 2x the price for this guitar if the cosmetic issues were dealt with.