Harley Benton HB-35 VB Vintage Series 4-stars Reviews

Superb value

This the first semi hollow I've owned and I love the sound. Can't go wrong for a budget guitar.

For the money? Insane.

You'll be hard pressed to find better value for money in the guitar world. Sounds great on its own after a setup, and a wonderful springboard for further mods.

Great Tone for Affordable Price

This guitar has surprised me for the total overall quality compared to the affordable price it's sold. Comfortable gib-style fretboard, nice sound, colour and finish. Definetely satisfied!

Update to June 2020

The lacuqer around the joint of the neck has cracked. The bridge is popping out of the body and the tuners dont hold the intonation well. I will contact the customer service.

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.

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.

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.