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

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.

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.