Harley Benton HB-35 VB Vintage Series Reviews

After a quick setup playes great.

My HB-35 VB Very Pleased. Small niggles can be sorted.

Bought planning to use as main guitar and modify. Using at home for now. Not as comfortable to hold as my ST style guitars. I would probably get the red one with the coil splits if buying again. I tidied up the scratch plate edges by removing, filing and sanding and re-fixing. Setup and finish are good - I will be smoothing the frets a bit more to get them properly smooth to make it more pleasant to play. Sounds good, especially wired up with an amp. Really great value for money. Highly recommend to try guitars in shops for style comfort wherever possible before making a decision. So pros: Great but not excellent but fantastic for the price. Minor features (no trem, no coil split), sound (acoustically a bit brighter rather than woody due to the gloss finish), and finish (rough cut scratch plate edge and frets polish lacking) points keep it from being fantastic but still very good.

One of the Best Values Out There!!!

I was really surprised at the level of quality of this guitar at such a low price. It's honestly worth minimally twice the price, maybe more. I've examined the guitar very closely and can't find any structural defects or defects in the finish, binding, etc. Everything in that respect appears to be perfect. I was also surprised to find no problems with the fret height. It was set up well and perfectly playable on arrival.

Some of the negative things: The bridge and tailpiece appear to be on the cheap, budget side of things. I will probably replace them someday. But the tuners seem to work well enough. I'm not sure if I'll ever need to replace them. So far, so good. One problem: the toggle switch is really, really loose. Still functional, but really loose. Will probably replace it in the near future. And I'll probably replace the nut for a tusq one. The ceramic pickups sound fine (though I have some alnico Wilkinsons lying around that I will install anyway) and the pots work well. But all this negative stuff being said, what is left is a really, really good, solid guitar that is perfect as a platform for hardware and pickup upgrades. I plan to buy a second one to use as a modding platform very, very soon.

Not great out of the box, but very nice with a little work

After ogling the HB-35's for a long time, I finally took a leap on the base model with a hard case. I was very impressed that it only took a week for it to arrive in the US.

Out of the box, I was underwhelmed. The guitar looked great. Only flaws were a sloppy bit of binding on the underside, and the fretboard has a few small indentations around the 2nd-3rd fret (these weren't visible until after I took the strings off to give the fretboard a Linseed Oil treatment). Neither are noticeable except on close inspection.

But it didn't play well. The factory strings were junk. Even after I replaced them with a good set, the action was stiff, and the stock pickups were tinny and harsh.

So, a bit of work: I installed a cheap set of Wilkinson ceramic PAFs and brought the action down with a truss rod tighten, and now this is a much better guitar. These pickups are really too hot for the body style, so I will be replacing them again, but fixing the action made it much, much more enjoyable to play. As they say, "For the money..." it's a good bet.

Great for the money

A nice bit of kit. The neck and body are very nice as is the hardwear. The pickups are nice, full and what you would expect from this type of guitar, not thin at all. It was very much let down by the pick guard. That is something many have said, it looked like it was cut out with nail clippers. I chucked it within 5 minutes. I would pay the same, hell, 10 Euros more if they don't put one on. However over all worth more than the money you pay.

Another Harley Benton Winner!

Just brilliant.

Plays as good as my CST-24T. Sublime finish and sounds great. Pickguard cut is the only thing that lets it down but when it plays better than guitars costing up to 10 times as much then I think we can forgive that!

Demo Here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvKNdWrv6To

Great value guitar

This was the first Harley Benton guitar I have ever bought so I wasn?t completely sure what to expect. My experience so far has been very positive.

This guitar sounds great and looks great too and for under 200 euros it feels like a steal.

It didn?t come set up perfectly (but what guitar does anyway) and the strings sounded very cheap. Besides that the only other negative I can think of is the pickup selector which feels a bit too flimsy to me.

If you are looking for a hollow body guitar but you don?t want to spend a lot this is definitely a great choice. I have the sunburst model and couldn?t be happier with it.

V Good for the price with only a couple of downsides

This guitar is a very good cheaper alternative to a more expensive Epiphone ES-339 Pro, built very well, however, with the cheaper price comes a few downsides. The original strings need to be changed straight away as they sound cheap and whiny. Both the tuners and volume/tone knobs aren't very sensitive and take a bit of getting used to. A good strap needs to be bought with this guitar as it is surprisingly heavy.

you won`t find a better one for the bucks

this guitar is well made and it look`s great and the pickups are bright and not muddy its set up ok,i`v been looking for a guitar of this type and for the price you can`t go wrong?you won`t find a better semi-acoustic for this price i`v looked so i`m happy with my new toy .

Pleasantly surprised

Bought this product on looks alone so imagine my surprise to find out that it actually plays well.

Lower the action to your taste and stick some slinky strings on and you will be amazed. Love it!

HB-35 VB

This is a replacement for the first one that was damaged in transit.

The replacement HB-35 VB arrived better packaged than before and appeared to have survived the journey. On inspection there was damage to the binding near the jack in put, looked like a bad repair at building / manufacturing stage but for the cost of the guitar and the hassle of having to return the last one I am gonna live with it, 'call it patina'.

The guitar played more or less straight out of the box, very slight fret buzz on the 6th E but I am going to wait and let it settle before making any alterations. All in all it fits the bill, I wanted a semi hollow but without the price tag and this looks the part and plays well so far.