Harley Benton HB-35Plus Cherry Reviews

unbelievable for the price! looks and sounds fantastic, was worried about it staying in tune from other reviews I've seen but I've had zero problems with it. Just change the strings and it's a great guitar to play.

Splendid guitar

No flaws, great quality-to-price ratio

Magnicifence.

This guitar is amazing really.

Looks and feels incredible and sounds good too.

Some people have said that the flame top is hardly there on there's but I must've gotten lucky as mine is beautiful.

Pros

Looks beautiful

comfortable neck

great fret work .

Cons

-The bolt for the pickgaurd was too long and was touching the finish of the guitar, thankfully the mark it left is very small and I could easily cut it down, it was disappointing.

- Action was too high out of box but that's easily fixed.

- fret board was a little dry as they often are on harley benton. Put some lemon oil on so no big deal.

Impressive

A great guitar for the price, unmatched. However my only issue, and it's a small one, is the pickups are a little too hot, i expected a more vintage sound. But it's down to personal preference :)

Second HB.

I love this guitar a lot it has become my favourite guitar and the sustain wow great tone just love it.

But there are some problems for a 175 pound guitar they really did put this together with no love, the bridge and tailpiece are not lined up right and the toggle switch was drilled fair to big and who ever did it was ruff and ripped the wood to shreds.

I cleaned all this up. But it is a stunning guitar stays in tune sounds great feels great love it.

A very nice guitar, especially when you consider the price. Good electronics, amazing sound. Minor mechanical adjustments made by a good luthier will transform it into a really special musical instrument.

Excellent guitar!

I am very pleased with this guitar. The overall workmanship what you'd expect to see in a guitar costing thousands more. Right out of the box everything was set up perfectly and ready to play. It sounds great. I love the coil split option so you also get the single coil tones. Highly recommended.

HB-35Plus Cherry

Very nice guitar, cool looking. Two blemishes. Bridge is not positioned optimally. When setting intonation You have not enough movement

available. Probably shipment damage, but the box was not damaged, rear strap button sunk into the body. Repaired with replacing for bigger screw and adding a washer.

I'm kipping the guitar because everything else is excellent for the price asked.

Excellent beginner guitar

Received as a birthday present, been taking lessons for half a year. Great sound, brand was unknown to teacher but really sounds good. Great that also can hear sound without the amp...when amp is not available or for early morning practise

It's a wonderfull surprise. I cannot recommend this enough to any beginner or seasoned guitar player!

Ok, I waited for a while before this review and now i can make a more accurate assessment of this guitar. First thing’s first. I should say right off that i am enjoying this guitar far beyond my expectations.

The scratchplate was flawless, but my HB-35 is probably from a newer batch. (The sratchplate is an LP style, not the rounded one usually found 335’s).

The “Flamed” maple IS there, but it is almost imperceptible on my cherry HB-35. Maybe the finish is just to thick, i don’t know, on the other hand the guitar still looks amazing and this could be a plus on durability.

The neck is made of three different pieces of wood, (Headstock with a neck scarf and two pieces on the neck joint).

Electronics are fine. The push pulls and the three way switch feel much better than i had expected beforehand, and the roswell pickups are a wonderful surprise on warmth and clarity, (mainly given the fact that the whole guitar costed only 195€). I actually liked the pickups a lot and i was really not expecting that to happen.

On other reviews that i've read some people liked the fact that the jack input was located on the bottom of the lower bout and not on the top, but on my case the was actually a problem. I use a Shure wireless and the even with the bodypack on the bottom of the strap the longest shore cable is difficult to reach the input jack, (the reach wouldn't be a problem if the input jack was located in a more traditional place).

The hardware is kind of what you would find on your average epiphone, and i only had an issue with the TOM bridge. Nothing about the material, but more about where it was installed. I had to reverse 4 saddles in order to get intonation accurate above the 14th fret.

On the other hand, after this saddle adjustment i was actually able to lower the action a LOT and the neck and build quality allowed it to happen.

Although i had to do a totally new setup in order to make the guitar fully usable until the 22nd fret, please don’t get me wrong, the guitar sounded amazing in the lower octave just out of the box, (factory strings and all). Can't really criticisethe nut, it's well cut and looks ok.

After a wonderfull week playing it I decided that this guitar would be used in gigs side by side with gibsons and other much more expensive brand guitars so i ordered some greenish keystones shallers with double rings. The ones that came from factory held tuning ok-ish, but these new ones work flawlessly. The other only upgrade the guitar got was a gibson 498T pickup installed in the bridge. Again this was not because the roswelll bridge LAF PU didn't sound right, it was just because on the set i’m doing for the moment, this is what I need in order for this guitar to fit in without having to make any adjustments on my rig.

In terms of size, the body of the HB-35 is between a 339 and a 335… for me is just perfect. Not to big as a 335, not to small as 339.

Cons…, yes there where a few, mostly in terms of setup, but nothing that i had not found before on epiphones or even gibsons. All in all I’ve upgraded the HB-35 spending additional 140€ and I didn’t had to spend any money on a luthier because i can do everything myself. (beside the pu and the tuners i changed strings to 9’s, oiled the fretboard, polished the frets and lubbed the nut with big bends nut sauce. Anyway i’m really glad I did these upgrades because with about 410€, (including the suitable hardcase), i have an instrument that fulfils the job of some of my other guitars that costed between 1000 and 5k, and that is simply amazing. (i think semi-hollowbody epi’s are more expensive and i don’t like their pu’s).

From a reference standpoint i should state that I perform professionally mostly in auditoriums, and this guitar performs as good any other instrument costing 5 to 10 times more.

When i ordered this guitar i thought i was ordering a “335” style guitar… i’ve even upgraded the tuners to copy the look and vibe of the vintage dot gibsons. Well, after this experience, and in my mind this guitar is something of it’s own, it looks great and feels and sounds amazing. It’s not some 335 knock off anymore and i’m proud showing off this HB headstock on stage because the guitar has an amazing tone.

p.s. I only went trough the trouble of writing this review because i can still not believe how much value for money the instrument represents even without the upgrades that I had made, so i cannot recommend this enough to any beginner or seasoned guitar player.

Stunningly beautiful guitar

What can I say? This is one hell of a guitar for the money, the finish is equal to or better than a lot of leading brand names. In fact I've seen much more expensive guitars with a less impressive finish.

The Roswell pickups are surprisingly good, and while some experienced guitarists may swap them out for a brand they have a personal liking for, I think the roswell's are just fine and I will be leaving them in. If in time one goes faulty I may swap out but I would probably just replace with another Roswell. Coil taps work just fine as well, I've heard one or two criticisms about output drops when engaging single coil, but that is only to be expected, and easily coped with. Single coils generally produce lower signal than humbuckers.

Tuners as you would expect on a guitar of this price point are not high end, but they are smooth and hold tune just fine - certainly the best I've seen up to now on a guitar in this price range. Bridge assembly seems OK but I've yet to play around with the action, and I don't anticipate any issues.

Controls are small pots as you would expect, but in function as good as anything high end. Both volume and tone are smoothly responsive all the way. If they wear out in two years I may opt for better replacements but honestly, unless they go unreasonably quickly I may replace like for like if I need to.

My "baby" has always been my Fender Telecaster but the old girl has some competition as I've fell a bit in love with this HB-35 plus! You get a lot of bang for your buck with a Harley Benson and it's easy to see how people can end up with a collection of them. I normally only have one guitar and one bass, while keeping a "when I win the lottery" list. I've got to keep my beloved tele, I have a very gigable HB35, and a CST 24-T arriving tomorrow. If my amp hadn't given up the ghost yesterday I would have been ordering a Big Tone and a Fusion St within a month or two. So it's save the penny's for the new Boss Katana II then back to expanding the Harley Benton Collection for this new fan boy!

Harley Benton HB35.

Excellent Guitar. You can only tell the difference between the HB35 and a Gibson ES335 by the name on the headstock. Great craftsmanship at a fraction of the price. I would highly recommend particularly if you like German craftsmanship.

Shockingly better than I expected

I have been playing guitar for over 40 years, I have owned the expensive Fenders and Gibsons, the cheaper Mexican made Fenders and Chinese made Epiphones and other guitars. That being said, I decided to go back to University and finish my degree, so I am on a budget and have been looking for a reliable, inexpensive guitar. I ran across Harley Benton by chance when I was looking for semi-hollow ES-335 type guitars. Watched all the reviews and demos on YouTube, and was still skeptical due to the extremely low price, but saw that there was a money-back guarantee and a 3-year warranty, so I decided to take a gamble. I live in South Texas so the package took exactly 10 days to get here from Germany, which I thought was pretty quick.

Cons

When I received it and unboxed it, the only thing I saw wrong with the body was the pickguard, which seemed hastily cut by hand, which doesn't bother me, I always remove the pickguards from ES models. There were a couple of tiny blemishes on the body, but that's just cosmetics. If I wanted a perfect body, I'd save for a 4000.00 Gibson.

Pros:

I have read that other people had complaints about it not staying in tune very well, so I was prepared to get Grover tuners for it. However, after playing it ferociously for a few days, I have only had to tune it once, so the stock tuners stay. When I first plugged it in and played it clean, that was my WOW moment. It had a really warm tone, almost as good as the Gibson ES-339 I had. It sounded just as good dirty, and when I switched to single-coil, it had that cool "quack" that I hear with single-coil Strats. The neck was straight and the action was awesome right out of the box, but I did adjust it to my liking.

My experience after 3 days:

I have to say this is the first guitar I have ever had at this low price that I pick up and play and cannot put it down for hours. No, it is not a Gibson ES 339 that costs thousands, but I think this is much much better in playability and sound than many 500.00 US Epiphone ES-339 and 335 guitars I have owned. I highly recommend this guitar if you are on a budget and you need a great work-horse to gig with or just record or simply play and practice. This would make a great starter guitar for anyone learning how to play. I was planning to keep this until I graduated from University next year and able to afford a Gibson again, but I think I will keep this as part of my arsenal. Very fun to play!

I have already recorded tracks with this guitar, and it sounds awesome! It is a keeper!

Lovely guitar. Absolute bargain.

I am really impressed with my HB-35 Plus. It looks great, sounds lovely and is easy to play. I use it for recording at home.

The neck was a bit bowed when the guitar arrived. This was easily resolved using the included Allen key. There are no sharp edges on the frets, the neck is really smooth. The frets are well finished and did not need polishing. Once adjusted the neck is perfect. The nut is well cut and the strings do not stick when tuning. The dot markers on the edge are lined up perfectly.

The action on the guitar is pretty good but not perfect. I tried to lower the bridge but it bottomed out after one quarter turn. So I am unable to get the action as low as would be ideal but it is acceptable. The intonation is fine.

The tuners are surprisingly good, smooth and accurate. Once tuned the guitar holds tune well.

The pots are smooth and the coil taps easy to switch. The selector switch looks a wee bit flimsy but seems to work well. The jack socket works well. The pickguard on mine is fine. All the hardware was well fitted with no loose parts.

The finish on my guitar is flawless, there are no areas of smudging or dings or blemishes. The only negative thing is the AAAA flame maple top. This barely shows through the cherry staining. It’s hard to see and certainly doesn’t show up in photos. That being said, this is a beautiful guitar!

The Roswell humbuckers sound good and punchy. From the bright, biting bridge pickup to the warm, creamy neck pickup. The coil taps provide a quiet funky sound. I like to coil tap the bridge pickup for rhythm and the use neck humbucker for lead. Switching between the two gives a noticeable change in volume. Very useable.

As previously mentioned by someone UPS are not the best carrier to use. They did not deliver my guitar on the arranged day and then left it sitting outside on my doorstep in the cold when I was out. Perhaps this is what caused the neck problem.

All in all though a superb semi-acoustic and an absolute bargain. I would buy again.

The guitar is very good quality . The sound is excellent!

Another satisfied Harley Benton owner

I can't find anything not to like about this guitar so far. It arrived with low action, no fret buzz, and looks great. The finish is perfect as far as I can tell. Seems like a fantastic value!!

Play like quality name brand guitar

Manufacturer did attend to the details on the guitar. I like the feel of the fret board. MInimum set up effort to my liking.

Unbelievably good for the price.

What a guitar, incredibly well put together and plays well straight out of the box.

Pro's:

The fit and finish is great, there was some tiny blemishes here or there, but they are unnoticeable unless you hunt for them.

The neck and frets were perfect on my guitar, and ultimately that is the most important thing for any guitar. There were no uneven frets, the neck was straight with a slight bow. The action was low and there was no buzzing all the way up the neck. The only thing that was slightly wrong was the fretboard was dry. But after applying some lemon oil all was well.

The pickups sound great to my ear. They are very hot, but respond well when turned down slightly on the guitar, if you need a less intense sound. The coil splitting works well, maybe not something I'll use too much.

Cons:

No guitar is perfect, but thankfully the cons here are very slight. Really it comes down to the use of cheap hardware on the guitar. The nut was poor and caused some tuning issues, I bought a Graph Tech PT 6060 00 slotted nut which fitted well with some minor sanding. The saddles are poor and caused strings to break often, I replaced with a new graphtech tune'o'matic bridge. And the tuners aren't the best, I find that I constantly have to slightly tighten them to keep it tuned, I've ordered replacements.

I have ended up spending a little less than 100eur on my upgrades and they are the cherry on the top of an already great guitar. Beginner or experienced players will find great things in this instrument. You just can't go wrong.

Better than expected

You can't find a better for this kind of money. Mine has a particularly nice flame with out being too "ornate". The fit and finish is fantastic and after initial break-in, it stays in tune. It has nice resonance acoustically. Even the strings sound fine, for now.

If your playing jazz or clean, it may fall a little short, for anything else, it more than fill the spot. I play through a Blackstar HT20, Fender Superchamp X2 and a Vox VT 40. I can get good tone from any of these.

I'm a bedroom player and it suits me fine. New PUs, pots, switches, etc would improve any shortcomings a gigging pro might find.

If this is where your budget sits, you'll get your money's worth and then some.

Harley Benton HB-35Plus Cherry

Very nice guitar. Better than expected. Bought as a gift for my Father in law.