Harley Benton HB-35Plus Vintage Burst 4-stars Reviews

Changed Puckups love tje sound

Great build quality for price neck is exellent! I changed the pickups to hotter ones and I love the sound!

Muddy

The guitar looks great and everything works. The sound is very muddy and I had to buy an equaliser pedal and brighten the EQ on my Zoom multi-effects pedal to get the sound I bought it for that's to say B B King/Chuck Berry/ Beatle's Casino guitars. I kinda wish I hadn't of bothered but it looks the part and, with my additions it will be OK so I'll keep it.

HB-35 plus

This Guitar was beyond my expectation, I don't regret buying it.

Excellent purchase of 335 model

Hard to fault even if it was 4x price.

The smaller things (fret smoothness) easy to rectify.

For experienced to starter musicians -- this is a really good buying decision.

Everything was great till the nobs got lose

The nobs got lose and stopped working idk how to fix it. Great guitar terrible nods.

I am impressed

Quality; features; sound vs price can not be beat.

Amazing guitar

I always wanted to try a jazz box but never wanted to spend a stupid amount of money but even with how inexpensive this is it has replaced my Strat and Tele the versatility is just unmatched for me truly an amazing guitar! :)

Really good guitar, but not excellent

I'm not a professional guitarist so my opunion may be ignored tbh, but anyway - I had cheap Ashtone SG for years which sucked alot - didn't even work at times (electronics) and get out of tune easily. So I wanted a guitar that would actually work properly and stay tuned. This HB works properly, but the tune... G string can survive just a few bends. Maybe that's normal and you need locking machine heads or something, because I also have SC-450Plus LD Vintage and it keeps tune even worse. Strings are default btw.

Besides that tuning thing I feel good about this guitar, it is beautiful indeed and sounds just nice.

Great guitar

Ordered this guitar almost a year ago. And was extremely impressed with it in terms of how it felt and the features. The one caveat I had was that the neck pickup was a little muddy. But the guitar felt amazing in the hands.

Awesome guitar

As a newbie, I can not provide a very deep analysis, but for me, the guitar sounds awesome, it's pretty looking and it definitely is worth the price. The build quality is beyond decent, it does not feel like a cheap product. I have not perceived any buzzing, but I must say the tuners could be better, but they do the job. The split-coil functionality it's cool and bout pickups sound great.

This guitar does everything that I expect it to do -- the chords and comping are deep, warm and silky and it starts singing on the higher frets. Awesome sound, even not factoring in the price.

On the downside I hear a lot of fret buzz and it will need fret polishing eventually, the guitar had stains of unknown white substance, and the fretboard needs a thorough cleaning.

Overall, the downsides are easy to fix, and you get awesome guitar for cheap.

Beware that regular guitar cases don't fit this guitar.

QC on electronics not great, but excellent bones

My neck pickup arrived ungrounded and buzzed when touched. Instead of dealing with returns, I opted to completely rewire the guitar. The construction of the guitar is awesome overall. The only setup I really need to do was polish frets and oil the fretboard. Now that I have Seymour Duncan 59 neck and JB bridge, this thing is absurdly good. Just keep an eye out for crappy electronics wiring and be prepared to polish frets and give a proper setup.

Great guitar

Not bad at all use it for the studio.

With a new bridge fitted from gear 4 music.Nashville i think,it added sustain.

Have a video of it

https://youtu.be/tPKFc_W0A7o

Good value for money!

Pros - Good sound, fair playability, great looks, sound build and good value for upgrades,

Cons - Weak machine head, needs some non-expensive fret work for better playability

Good value for money. Suitable for introduction to the world of semi-hollow guitars as well as for upgrade enthusiasts.

Happy with it, despite some minor issues.

Pros

- Looks like a lot of guitar for the money, with some caveats (see below).

- It resonates and sustains like crazy. I really like the sound.

- I also love the growl of the humbuckers as an alternative to my Strat. The pups are quite hot and crude, but I'm happy with them.

- neck is straight and frets are level(ish). There are no dead frets. There are a few sharp ones on one side towards the 15th fret. Nothing too serious.

Cons

- Pickguard is horrible, both the cheap plastic, the sharp-edged finish and the way that the main screw holding it in place is not fully countersunk. Once I decided I was going to keep the guitar I removed it. It looks much nicer without it anyway.

- there were a few hums and buzzes when I first started playing it. There was some loose veneer or wood inside the top which I either removed or glued down. It's fine now.

- The dots on the side of the fretboard are slightly off centre. It's not something that bothers me.

- the seam in the middle of the flamed top is about 3mm off centre. Again, this doesn't bother me.

- the vintage burst is more orangey than I expected. It still looks nice hanging on the wall next to my tidepool (blue) Strat.

- the G string kept going flat one evening when I was practicing a solo with a lot of bends on it. I grated some pencil into the nut slot and it cured it for a while, but then the problem comes back and disappears from time to time for G and D strings. Apparently this is an issue with many 3/3 tuner headstocks. Maybe I'll change the nut.

- the inlays really look like mother-of-toilet-seat plastic. In retrospect, the dot inlays of the non-plussed version would look better. Come to think of it, I can live without the coil splits too, so maybe I should have gone for the black version. Ah, who cares?

- the pau ferro fingerboard is redder and lighter than expected and doesn't feel substantial. It feels like a veneer. Maybe it will improve with age.

In conclusion it's more than good enough for the money and is a useful new sound to my guitar collection.

Harley Benton HB-35Plus Vintage Burst

Thinking Semi-Acoustic for a while, and buying Harley Benton also?When this was available I jump in...And was a good buy.

Sound, quality, etc. are good...The action was a little high, nothing else.

If you looking for good, affordable guitar...This is one option.

Pleasantly Surprised

So this is my first "China" non US made guitar. Simply there is nothing to complain about... I read a lot of reviews some good, some no so good. However I am pleasantly surprised. No it did not come with my brand of strings, but neither did my Gibson's or Fender's... The flame maple top is not as pretty as I would like, but the quality is good. It plays good, it sounds good, and I paid 10% of the price of a 335... So I say nice job!

Great guitar

The guitar is great, the roswell pickups are good, I like the tone. A couple of pure cosmetic minus. 1) mine is almost black, so it looks like the back and the darkness of the color of the 3 tone sunburst is not consistent and far from the picture, that looks like a dark red. 2) The veneer is barely visible and 3) the knobs feel chip.

The neck work is great and the actiom was perfect for my style.

a fantastic guitar for fantastic price

Almost a Gibson ! for the price payed it's a GGREAT piece kit.I could say its a poor mans Gibson.It is guitar of your dreams

Great guitar

I purchased this guitar after seeing it reviewed on YouTube. I wanted something different than my single coil guitars for playing rock and blues, and this just looked great. I went for this model over the standard HB35 because of the split coil option.

The tones that can be got from this guitar are great

The HB35 plus is a beautiful well finished guitar except for a few small things:

The pic guard is poorly cut but can be removed and the guitar looks great with or without it.

The bridge pick up is a bit weak Compared to the neck there is a bit of a tone drop, I got around this by balancing the two volumes.

The tuning heads could be a bit better quality, I wouldn't mind paying a few extra euros for this!

Anyway, I really enjoy playing this guitar and can't recommend it enough. It's well worth the money.