Harley Benton HB-35 BK Vintage Series Reviews

Nice tool

For that price tag this guitar is absolutely amazing!

Feels expensive, though it isn't

Awesome guitar. Sounds great, feels great. It makes me want to grab it and play it. I'm very happy with the purchase.

satisfied

amazing finish right out the box,especially for an incredible price.

perfect for beginners, need to replace tuners,strings,pickups and set the action to go on stage.

Splendid guitar

Plays fine from the box . i wasnt expecting perfection , and in fairness didnt get it . I had to lower the action to my style , i like it low . consequently a fret had to be filed , 14th i think . took a couple of minutes , Also i swapped out the tuners , the originals are ok but i wanted Gotohs . The pick ups are good too , but i swapped them for Seymour duncans . The guitar now is a monster , i love it , These are great guitars !!

Can't Express How Nice This Guitar Is

The HB35 is the third HB guitar I have now owned, and is by far the nicest in every way!

Starting with the build, it feels solid with a thick neck and a decent weight. It is not a true hollow body, as there is a block down the centre, but that is not a complaint! The binding is neat and looks great against the black of the body.

The bridge is solid and well made, with no sharp edges. The tuners are OK, they are accurate enough to not cause any issues.

As for sounds (what really matter), I could not be more impressed. The pickups are medium output, giving clear clean tones, but with enough push to create great rock sounds. Perfect for everything from

BB King to Foo Fighters.

All in all a great value guitar!

Manufacturing Issues

Cons:

The pick guard bolt used for mounting to the angle bracket was sticking up proud of the guard.

Very easy scrap your hand or catch your pick while strumming.

I used a large drill to countersink the bolts? head below the surface of the pick guard.

The tuners follow the lines of the Headstock.

The two center tuning machines are pushed in.

The manufacturing process is trying to keep the distance from the outside of the Headstock the same this causes a issue.

The strings going to the two top tuners barley clear the center tuners.

The saddles slots are cut too deep common on Asian G style clones. This causes issues, the thinner strings hit the back of the bridge before going into the tail piece. Yes I raised the tail piece a small amount to correct angle to allow for clearance between the strings and the back of the bridge.

Input Jack came loose in a few days.

It?s threads barley make it thru the body and there is no room for a washer between the fastening nut and the body. I can?t see if there is a locking star washer on the backside of the jack. Why not use a small square metal plate to mount the jack and make it easier to maintain.

No system to restrain the wiring harness from showing thru the F hole.

Pros:

Finish is fine

Absolutely fantastic value.

Hello from New Brunswick, Canada (named after Brunswick, Germany)

My first Harley Benton for this old guy. And the first brand new guitar I've purchased in many, many years. I have been building and putting some on my own.

Fantastic value and plays really well. You can't go wrong with this one.

Thanks so much,

Brent Johnson

Impressive - *updated

I'm a semi-pro guitarist. I've been playing for 20 years. I do regular session work and several (big) live shows a month. I also teach and am Adviser to the Arts of a respected UK university. I hope my review comes with some credence.

This guitar is impressive.

The neck is comfortable and the Blackwood fret board is very handsome. The frets themselves are well seated and level, but were very rough. 10 minutes polishing the frets solved this and transformed the instrument. I'm sure there are lots of YouTube vids on how to do this - I used a kit I bought for polishing the headlamps of my car which consists of a sponge pad that attached to my drill!

The tuners are a little high ratio making it a little too easy to overshoot the mark. This may make stage tuning a little awkward for some. Nonetheless they are perfectly decent quality and hold tune fine.

The neck is nice and straight out of the box. With no adjustment to the truss or filing of frets I have lowered the bridge for a really low action with zero buzz. I have guitars I have spent four times the price on where this has not been possible without a pro set-up.

Lots of people will say 'whats the point of spending less than £200 on a guitar if you have to pay nearly £100 having it professional set up?!' - I disagree. I have paid £1000s for custom shop guitars that needed a pro set up, if not at the point of purchase a couple of years down the line once the road has taken its toll and my chops have made made valleys of the frets. Just because a setup is proportionally higher to the initial cost of the instrument, does not mean it is not worth doing if you want a really class act. In fact, I'd say that the shelf price obliges you do either do some work yourself or pay a pro. That said, after my fret polish, this guitar played great out of the box.

I was concerned that the pickups might not sound that great. If you are playing exposed Jazz you may want to opt for the HB35+. My understanding is that pickups on the + are a little more open sounding. But if, like me, you are grinding out rock and pop, you'll have no complaints here. I don't need coil tapping - I have other guitars if I want single coil twang.

Time will tell if the guitar is durable enough for the road. The components seem high quality enough and I got a bargain bundle with a hard case. At this price you can buy a new guitar after a couple of years of hard use anyway!

The overall finish is not perfect. The paint job has some (very minor) orange peel and there are some tiny flecks along the binding. There is also a small patch of rough work around on the fretboard at the last fret. None of these things affect the play-ability and are only noticeable from less than a few inches away in good light. If you want a family heirloom look elsewhere, but if you are looking for a good looking, great playing ES knock off that holds its own in the studio or the stage, this axe is a bargain!

*Just an update after a few months - still playing great. My band-mate brought his Gibson ES-345 along to a gig last weekend - I can honestly say my HB played better and sounded just as good.

Bought it for playing live gigs of loud rock, punkrock music

I bought this guitar because of its look and for fun. I intend to use it for playing live gigs of loud rock, punkrock music.

First thing is that you should somehow imagine what expect for that amount of money...

Firstly, if guitar costs 170¤ don't expect it has the best pickups and is made of the best parts (tuning machines, switches,..). Secondly, don't expect all the aesthetics details on guitar are how it should be. Mine had a few small crack in lacquer on the guitar neck, the dots on the upper side of fretboard are not centered on the whole lenght and there is some crack on a fretboard.

But nevertheless, guitar suprised me with a very playable and comfortable neck. Though while playing it went easly out of tune so, the first thing I did is that I change the strings and tuning machines. I bought Gibson PMMH-015 and they are doing the job well. As I said I play rock, punkrock riffs and with a distortion on the amp I must admit that there is no right "kick off" tone out of those pickups that the guitar come with. So I also changed the bridge pickup with the DiMarzio Super Distortion. And know the guitar serves me well and I am happy with it.

all right

well i'm simple strat and tele player i don't use hums.but in need af a new bad i make this choise and i will upgrade it.the instrument is technically well made so its playble after setting the action,high of the pickups and intonation.the pickguard and the pure switch are cons but think of the price in the other hand.

Great Value

Great guitar for the price . Tuners do the job well . I was planning on swapping pickups before it arrived but I dont think I'll touch them . They sound pretty good .

Excellent guitar for the price

This is my second Harley Benton purchase. I bought a JB-75SB RW Vintage Series bass and was so impressed I wanted to try one of their guitars. As with the JB-75, I am very pleasantly surprised at what I got for ¤169. This guitar is solid and very well built. The finish is very nice and the Palissander fretboard is beautiful. Once I got the guitar all set up it plays like a dream. Nice low action with no fret buzz anywhere on the neck. This guitar is a little brighter than I was expecting but I just adjusted my amp accordingly. About the only negative thing I can say about the guitar is that the tuners were terrible. They rattled and squeaked. I replaced them with a set of Kluson MS33C tuners and all is good now. Once again, you simply can't buy a better guitar for the price.

Great looking and playing guitar

Handles nicely, smaller and more ergonomic than you might think

Finished nicely, good action, nice neck, good tuners. Only minor gripes- the pickguard looks poor, badly cut. If you look inside the F holes you can clearly see the wiring, should have been easy to tidy them up.

Nice action out of the box, plays well with good sustain.

I'm really impressed with this guitar, have wanted a semi acoustic for a while and this will fit the bill nicely until I can afford a Gibson.

Just buy it, you won't find better quality at this pric

Great piece for the price

Before writing anything I need to say that this was my first semi-hollow purchase and I was debating myself for months before buying this guitar. With that said, I did not regret doing so and I would buy it again. The build quality is not flawless as the other reviewers pointed it out but after a few tweaks its a very useful piece. I did a lot of research and found a few reviews but I must say that this guitar is a killer for the price. Also checking every now and then I see the price gone up and is frequently out of stock which might indicate that many find this an attractive deal.

Pros:

The frets were nice and smooth, the finish was spotless, and also the tuners hold well. The neck is comfy and feels good (though the high gloss finish can feel sticky after hours of playing). Overall it looks very impressive and it's inspirational to play. It sounds very nice stacked with drives (as you would expect) and sounds warm and nice played through an AC15's clean channel. Also very distinctive and cuts through the mix when playing live with a band along other guitars equipped with humbuckers.

Cons:

The edges of the pickguard are rough and give it a somewhat awful look. The pickup selector is "clicky" and feels cheap but works fine. The guitar needed complete readjustment (action, intonation, etc.). Also the pickups are noname, generic ones which was a bit of disappointment. And one more thing... dump the strings and buy some decent ones. They are cheap and will stretch forever, you simply cannot keep it in tune for even one second.

With all that being said, you can take a look at the price tag and decide for yourself if these pros and cons are realistic or not.

Seriously useful piece of equipment!

I needed a semi-hollow guitar for fulfilling sounds in the studio, without damaging my wallet too much...

Having seen this, and armed with some skills in altering guitars(I've been throwing screwdrivers and soldering irons at every guitar I've owned for the last 20 years!) I pulled the trigger.

The guitar arrived not entirely flawless, but not enough for me to want to send it back-in consideration of how much it cost, and what I was about to do to it!

There was a minor cracking blemish to a section of the fretbooard binding, a small depression in the top's finish where the bass side bridge post is seated and looking through the bass side f-hole there has been a small cover up job performed on the inerior of the back laminate, with a thin slice of wood-perhaps to cover a knot or other natural flaw.

I had some spare parts taken out off changing parts from other guitars to help me change this one.

Kluson tuners.

Gibson Burstbucker II(for the Bridge)

ESP/Ltd ST203 Humbucker(for the neck)

And I bought..

Brown switch knob

Black-silver top vol/tone knobs

But the most useful change is to re-locate the switch and knobs to their 'correct' places!

Drop the Neck Tone into a new hole, the Neck Vol into the old Neck Tone hole, and the 3way into the old Neck Vol. Finally plugging the original 3way hole with a simple flat dome black plastic plug from a hardware store.

OK, so the look will not be perfect, but a damn sight better than how it arrived and at this money who would care? Naturally this mod works easier on a black finsh than either of the others.

I was lucky to have what would have been otherwise more expensive change outs simply lying around unemployed, but with all this done the guitar has totally opened up and come alive!

Don't forget the construction is of laminate maple, which is fundamentally the same as certain custom shop instruments from well known manufacturers. Simply put these are made in such numbers to allow it coming in at this price point-they're principally not the easiest guitars to construct either!

At the very end this is now a very useable product, capable of outgunning other like guitars of much higher price.

Now let's make some noise!!

absolutely beautiful

This is a really nice guitar. Very comfortable to play.

The neck pickup is set at an odd angle to the strings, not parallel with them. I think the pickup ring is incorrect for this guitar. A flat pickup ring would probably level it out. The sound does not seem to be affected though.

I bought this bundled with a case and was surprised the guitar was not shipped inside the case. Separate boxes for both. No shipping damage.

immaculate but unfortunately dangerous

Hello. As i said in my previous email to you. I was all set to congratulate you on a fantastic

German/Chineese made guitar but after adjusting the tailstop and then tunning up again the whole tailstop just flew out brushing my face in the process.But After carefull thought I still think this has the makings of a great guitar and will save up my pennies for a possible bigsby type tremolo unit.

But as I stated in my previous remarks this or should be a dangerous manafacture

concern.

Drew