Harley Benton HB-35 BK Vintage Series 5-stars Reviews

Great for beginners and semi-professionals

To begin with, the product has great value for money. Design is decent, and as someone who is occasional guitar player I would definitely recommend this model. Also it is nice for beginners, I find it very convenient for playing and sound is good as well.

Ridiculously good quality

Absolutely cannot fault this guitar. Pickups sound great, neck is great, weight is nice, plays nicely unplugged, tuners are great. Just get it.

Great guitar for the price

Guitar looks nice, sounds nice and at a great price.

Beyoned expectations , Beautiful ,plays like butter (smooth) feels great.

Nothing bad to say , I f i had tons of money i,d but every finish of this HB-35, love it, I,m an old guy and have seen many guitars,

A great 335 style guitar

The workmanship on this guitar is impeccable. The neck and fret work are perfect. The guitar arrived perfectly setup and in tune. It is now my favorite guitar in my collection. It sounds great unplugged and with amplification. Great job Harley Benton!

Best yet

I absolutely love this guitar. I own 7 Hb guitars and this HB 35 vintage is my go to guitar. Not a single flaw right out of the box. If you can only choose one new guitar please give the HB 35 vintage a try.

Well worth the price

Very good guitar, no problems encoutered, no regrets on purchase.

HB 35 vintage

Nice Guitar for the price. Well finished though the frets and nut needed a little work. Nice full rounded pickups. I would buy them for another guitar if they were available.

2.5 year evaluation

I bought this as my first electric guitar after playing 5/6 years acoustically. I had no experience with electric guitars and i was unfamiliar with the Harley Benton brand. After seeing some (video)reviews i thought: "well I might give this a go, considering the price and the good reviews".

This guitar has given me so much joy in the past years and still does. Its amazing that these quality guitars are being made in this price range. For playability i prefer it over my Epiphone PR-4E-NA.

Three minor details that i found after having the guitar for a while is that:

1. after the 16th fret the frets stick out a bit to the side, but its something that hasn't bothered me yet during playing. I might file them myself soon.

2. After 1.5 years or so, some of the volume/tone knobs sound scratchy in a certain range. I can fix this by using some contact spray (lubricant for electronic parts), but still havent gotten to it.

3. After getting familiar with electric guitars and my playing style i noticed that some strings had a higher output than others. The humbucker pickups are excellent for adjusting the height of the pickup and their individual polepieces yourself. Just consult some online videos and write down what you are doing in a diagram or something, so you can always adjust it back to how it came.

Overall a great guitar, which has convinced me to buy two more Harley Bentons!

Excellent!

I already owned an HB35 Plus Lemon Drop and that was so good I thought another HB35 would be a great idea, and at this price...... So, as I don't use the coil taps on the Plus, I saved a few Pounds and went for this. It's amazing for the price. Perfectly playable straight out of the box with no extra setting up. As usual, a little oil on the fretboard helps, as does a quick polish of the frets with some wire wool. Can't fault construction and finish. I may swap out the pickups for some P-90 types, but that's just me, there's nothing wrong with the stock ones. A lovely thing for much less money than you'd expect to pay for a lovely thing.

what can you say for the price its exceptional, change the strings and your ready to go

I change tunings machines and now keeps tones perfect. I play every day on it, good purchase

Great budget 335 emulation

I purchased this HB-35 BK to try to replace a (very) old Harmony hollow body that I decided to sell. I loved the style and tones of the Harmony, but didn't love the feedback, so I decided to try a semi-hollow instead. I've never had one, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

Disclaimer: This doesn't sound anything at all like the hollow body it was supposed to replace, but it has its own unique tones that will cover anything from jazz to (almost) metal. Very, very nice sound that cooperates very nicely with my amp set up as clean or crunch.

I'm disappointed that I'll still need to chase the tones I was originally looking for, but completely happy with the result that I got. This guitar is gorgeous and plays very nice.

The guitar gets 5 stars. Customer Service gets 5 stars. Shipping, not so much. I purchased this guitar with a case in a combo package, and also bought a SC-550 singlecut - again chasing tones. The two guitar boxes were packaged in another box with just enough paper padding on the top to fill the top portion of the outer box. No padding on the sides, and just a layer of paper at the bottom. The HB-35 arrived with the neck completely broken at the body. The only thing holding it together was the strings. The SC-550 had a crack all the way across the headstock. The case for the HB35 combo arrived about a week later. I'm not sure what happened there, or why the combo wasn't shipped together and the other guitar shipped separately.

Customer Service was great. I took pictures of the damage and sent them in. Within about a day they had a replacement HB35 ready to ship to me. ( The SC-550 was handled separately )

The replacement came in with not a great deal more packaging material, but it arrived in perfect condition.

It was set up well and like I mentioned above, the tones are incredible for a guitar at this price point.

At this price point, anyone looking to buy this model guitar will not be disappointed at all - assuming it arrives intact.

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!

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.