Harley Benton HB-35Plus Lemon Reviews

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As an experienced player owning a number Gibson’s over the years …including a 335 — the simple summary of this guitar is No Words.

It plays easy - intonation perfect - the neck is wonderful- like the old Gibson Jazz boxes…thick & easy to play — fast fret board low action— great sustain…

The guitar sounds like a great 335 in humbucker mode…including the middle position Plink that guitar is famous for.

What few write about is the single coil mode — you can get beautiful tele & strat sounds for clean country chicken pickin — endless sound combinations.

It is a steal at this price …… the Lemon drop is more of a burst than what I was expecting …… flame etc…beautiful- classic.

Anyone who spends 4K on a new Gibson 335 is throwing money away. You lose nothing with this guitar - nothing compromised. A great guitar — much more inspiring than my last Gibson 335.

Great Guitar!

I read and watched several reviews for this guitar before purchasing it. I am very impressed with this guitar. It is currently my favorite to play. The quality is great. I am very pleased. Definitely an incredible value.

Best $245 I ever spent!

What can I say? What a great guitar and what a great price for a great guitar! The finish was pretty much flawless. It's beautiful! I could find nothing to complain about aesthetically. As for the neck, it's fast and smooth and easy to play, which is pleasantly different than what I was expecting to get. The frets are nicely done, although they could use a slight polishing.

I am also quite satisfied with the pickups, both for clean and dirty sounds. (In fact, I love the tones I am getting with it through my Hughes and Kettner Tubemeister 20 and pedals.) IMO the HB35+ pickups are better sounding than the Gretsch 5230's FilterTrons. I have little use for coil splitting but I found that I could get a couple good useable tones out of this guitar with this feature. The tuners are good but could be better, and at some point in the future I will probably add locking tuners. Lastly, the guitar does need a little bit if setup but not much at all. String action was the perfect height for me.

All in all, one cannot beat the value this guitar provides. I absolutely love it! I only took one star off for the tuners, but again I'm not really complaining about them. I just wish it came with locking tuners, although if it did the price would certainly be a little higher. But who cares? I'd gladly pay it because in the past year I've purchased an upper mid-range priced Epiphone, Ibanez, and Gretsch, all of which I've had to return for quality control issues or just failure to keep a tune. But I won't be returning this guitar...Thanks Harley Benton for a great product!

Mixed feelings

Reviewed after 2 months of ownership.

My guitar has minor cosmetic defects (the black lines on the edging are not clear and blurred, the pickguard is dry, the frets are not polished), but this was expected based on the reviews.

What really upset me was the dead note on the 4th string of the 11th fret. It really makes me cry.

Otherwise, a good instrument for your money and a great option to get acquainted with semi-acoustic guitar

Bumpy start great ending

After watching many reviews of many different guitars I decided on the HB-35 Plus. my decision was based on features, sound & quality for the investment. I had some issues getting the order in, but after a phone call with a very friendly service person everything was was taken care of (while I was on the call). The order arrived in just a few days.

Wow, this thing is nice & sounds great too! I was really expecting to find some flaws. I would put this guitar up against ones many times the cost.

Great value for the price.

Bought this as a project guitar to learn how to do basic set-up and mods, and it soon became my couch guitar.

Considering the price its a good guitar, features such as coil tap and individual volume/tone knobs for each pickup are great additions. The stock pickups are not bad but do leave some room for improvement.

Good purchase if you are looking for a semi-hollow guitar on a budget.

This is my first electric guitar! Here is what I think of it.English is not my native language. I am Russian, so allow me to apo

Appearance: First glance got me flummoxed due to its impeccable beauty but when I started to delve into it, I have found some flaws like badly polished frets, loose humbuckers, a bit inclined fretboard, a gap between the upper threshold and the head, buzzing strings so I had to rise them. Color of the body is orange, not yellow as expected.

Sound: Just wonderful regardless of clicks that I hear in my headphones when I play it. I don't know if it is up to the instrument.

Conclusion

I am uncertain if such high price is justified but there is still much to test. As an addition, take a look at this guitar SC-450Plus LD Vintage Series.

Thank you)

Worth it 100%

I owned many guitars in the last 35 years - this one took me by surprise for it's value - I want to buy a few more now.

A lovely guitar

I am only a beginner and can't really do this great guitar justice, but it has a lovely sound. The setup is just about perfect out of the box, and the finish has a high quality.

The interaction of the two volume controls in the middle switch position is strange, but having asked about this in forums it is standard Les Paul wiring and can be used to good effect when you know what you are doing (see explains usage).

I am very happy for the price. The only complaint, if I am really picky the routing of the wiring is visible through the sound holes, ideally they would have routed round the edge! That has no effect on the sound or playability though.

Great 335 Clone!

I've played guitar for over 50 years and i can't put this guitar down....have bought 3 HB guitars and totally satisfied with them all!

Harley Benton HB-35Plus Lemon

Arrived in good order; well packaged and prompt. Needed a fair bit of work initially, although I expected this after reading other reviews.

Needed a restring, and the frets were scratchy and tarnished; neck also needed a few goes with oil to 'rehydrate' the wood.

Finish on the body is poor: flecks of other paint work all over the back and black trim is bleeding into the main body itself; can't expect much for that price though.

Pick-ups are ok but will be replaced with better; also swapped out the tuning pegs which were just awful. Upgraded saddle and tailpiece will be on the shopping list too.

All in all, it's a decent of guitar for that price, and if you are happy to use it as a project; or have some half decent spare parts lying around it will upgrade nicely. Shame about the paint job, but hey, you get what you pay for.

Nice 335 style model

New strings and it was good to go!

Not expected that quality in this price

You should definitely not expect anything perfect. It is normal for you to find imperfections that are visible to eyes. I was expecting something like this for this price. But they are not details that can be taken seriously. The things I'm talking about are cosmatic little details. Knobs are not very useful, they get slippery when playing and can hinder you from moving quickly. But what the hell is that tone? I really wasn't expecting this tone. Satisfying. an experience you won't regret.

Good, Playable, Value Guitar

My HB-35 Plus was a very good value for the price and was ready to play right out of the box with just a quick tuning.

Shipping from Germany to Virginia, USA was surprisingly inexpensive and fast. The boxes had some damage and the foam padding was damaged but I found no damage to the guitar.

Is there room for improvement? Yes, absolutely. However, for a student, beginner or someone on a budget, the fine tuning and pro setup can wait. I have spent a lot more money on brand new, name brand guitars that needed as much or more work than this.

Was fit and finish perfect out of the box? No.

When you look closely, there are flaws and imperfections in the finish and build. There is black overspray on the sides of the headstock and spots in the finish on the body. There are gaps between the binding and body where you can see the filler. The fingerboard has scratches, file marks and imperfection. But remember - this is a budget guitar and none of these things affect the playability or integrity of the guitar.

Was setup perfect? No. Fret ends are nicely finished. I found no high or low frets but they are a bit rough and could benefit from leveling and polishing. Truss rod adjustment and neck relief were spot on. The nut could use filing for better action. The trim ring around the neck pickup was installed backwards so the pickup is at a funky angle. The shape of the volume and tone knobs makes them hard to grab, especially to pull them up for coil taps.

None of these things are critical and can be addressed (or not) as time and budget allow.

I am in my 50s and have played guitar off and on since I was a child. I have had many guitars. Now I want one or two that visitors or I can pick up with no worries about damaging collector pieces. With a bit of fine-tuning, I think this is a winner.

It has more musical value than you paid for ...

I recently purchased a similar guitar for 10x this price. Blind folded, the difference is undetectable to me. Remove the blind fold and the difference is almost nothing. Feels, sounds, acts great. No complaints except the cheapo strings. HB has earned my respect. Time will tell if they hold up, but so far it looks like a promising value.

notches on the edge of the headstock are clearly asymmetrical and not exactly scaled to 3 thick strings.

hb-35plus

great guitar! good build quality and workmanship in general.Binding is excellent,really spot on.Fret ends are really neat, tops are a little scratchy but are playing in quite nicely.Tuners are better than you would expect at this price and stay in tune fine.Set up is good and plays well.Pick ups are very good for the money and give a nice 335 sound. Very pleased with my purchase and the quality is far better than the price would suggest.

Very nice hollow body

This guitar sounds really nice and plays well. Haven't noticed any defects or deformities. Full sound. The ability to split coils is very well done with each pickup split independently. Tone tapers well.

Great guitar for the price

I wanted to try semi-hollow guitar design for a long time and finally settled on this one. Now over a year passed since I bought one and I use it everyday. The only thing that was upgraded was the tuners (set of Kluson MS33C fit perfectly)

Pros:

- Great sound, especially for the budget

- Versatile

Cons:

- Polish cracked a bit in the corners of the neck joint, but it's been a long time since it happened and nothing went wrong structurally

- The knobs are slippery (because of their shape) and it's hard to use coil splitting

Besides these small cons, if you want to try semi-hollow design - this is a great choice! And with some modifications it would be amazing guitar for relatively small price.

Very good guitar!

This is such a good buy. A well designed, well executed guitar with great playability, nice looks and good pickups. It even has a nubone nut that was cut exactly right! Setup was good out of the box, no high frets and all electronics working perfect without any scratching. Apart from a little binding inconsistency along the neck, the guitar is pretty much flawless. The frets were level, but very scratchy and rough when bending. They also left my fingers black after playing, so you need to get some metal polish or fret erasers to get them up to a shine to get rid of the gritty and dirty feeling.

Soundwise the Roswell pickups sound warm and alnico-like, and the guitar has a wonderful sustain. Splitting the coils make the sound volume much lower, but mixing in one humbucker + one split can sound great! Tone control is also good. Tuners were okay (I switched them out for locking, but they worked fine). The bridge and tailpiece are all right, but a little sharp to lean your wrist on. All in all a superb choice for a semi-acoustic guitar (and better than the Ibanez AS53).