Harley Benton CST-24T P90 Black Flame 3-stars Reviews

Good Guitar but needed some work...

This guitar showed up a few weeks ago and I was instantly stoked at the overall package. The finish is gorgeous, the neck is glossy but quite playable, and the pickups sound pretty good through my Fender Blues Jr.

Once I got a little time on it, I realized there were a few issues that it shouldn't have with it being a new guitar, regardless of price point. The nut was cut so low that I had to get pliers to pull the low E string out of it and all four of the wrapped strings (EADG) were set so low in the nut that there were big issues with tuning stability. Several frets were high and needed some work to get it playable and all of the frets needed to be polished. There were a few that needed to be filed on the ends due to fret sprout, but I live in the mountains with low humidity, so I expect that to happen on most guitars. The bridge was almost maxed out on height on every string to be at a playable string height across the fretboard. Finally, the truss rod needed to be adjusted about 1/2 turn to get the neck straight, but that could again be due to my area. There are a few areas of the finish that aren't perfect, but I don't care about that so I won't address it.

Overall, this is a decent guitar and once I replaced the nut and gave it a decent setup it's enjoyable to play. No issues with the electronics and I'm overall happy with my purchase, but I don't think I'll buy a Harley Benton guitar again.

Fret buzz

Pretty cool guitar, looks really great, plays well. Sadly, there was significant fret buzz that would not go away after changing the action.