Harley Benton TE-20 SB Standard Series 4-stars Reviews

Harley Benton TE-20 SB Standard Series

Pleasantly surprised with this buy. Overall sound is good, from a cost of less than 100 euro professional sound can't be expected but is a perfect buy for beginners/upgrading.

Great price quality

I already had other guitars from more expensive brands that were not as good as this one.

Very good for the price

This turned up in surprisingly playable condition. Not too heavy, hardware is acceptable, frets are ok...sounds like a telecaster. For €89 this is very, very good, although there will inevitably be a few less than perfect details in any guitar at this price.

I do guitar repairs and setups and I had a few spare bits around so I spent some time tidying this up. I put on a 3ply pickguard, which instantly made it look less cheap, and put in some Wilkinson Vintage tele pickups I had handy. Did some work on the nut, oiled the board and polished the frets, replaced a couple saddle height screws with shorter ones to save my hand from being scratched, etc.

Now it looks, feels, plays and sounds like a fairly decent guitar. I just wanted to have a basic telecaster in my collection to noodle on occasionally and this is fine for that.

A very good guitar for beginners or as a modding platform for tinkerers.

Unbeatable price

For beginners, it's impeccable. Solid build quality and features.

Sound has room for improvement - a bit muddy at times. But you can't beat the price for quality ratio

Great low cost guitar

Arrived in under two weeks, not bad for a guitar coming to Canada from Germany. Tune it up and it was good to go. Pickup voicing is slightly muffled/muddy but nothing that can't be tweeked in amp settings. Will be ordering another Harley Benton soon.

Great for the money.

I bought this for my father at Christmas and overall it was a great experience. The only issue at all was the fretwork. The ends were heavily sprouted and it was basically unplayable without shredding your hands but with a bit of patience and some file work, it is a fun little guitar to play!

What you get

For this price, this is a great guitar! You need to understand why you are buying it - study, local concerts, garage recording - it is good for all this.

In my case, there were minor flaws: a pair of machine heads had backlash, the neck pickup did not work (I had to do some soldering), everything else was done at a good level, and this level is clearly higher than the price for this instrument.

The pickups are not loud, sometimes there is not enough power, but this is my fault - I often use an instrument with distortion, and it is not designed for such overloads.

For almost two years of use, the frets under the 6th and 5th strings have worn out a little - I am a rather aggressive guitarist and the guitar does not stand idle in the corner.

Yes, this is not a Fender Telecaster USA, this is an excellent tool for its tasks, you just need to understand what you are buying and why, and if everything is in order with this, then you will not be disappointed!

Great Tele for a base to mod and improve with.

Needed a tele for home studio use, looked at budget range opted for Harley Benton over a Squire and wasn't disappointed. Great finish and so glad I took the plunge.

I planned to mod the guitar so really just needed something that had a good foundation to work on and this was perfect. Plan to upgrade pickups and machine heads in near future but it plays fine as is.

One thing as always with budget guitars is dressing of sharp edge frets and need a good polish too to improve playability and that is why only 4 stars given. If that little bit more effort was spent dressing/polishing frets even if it added extra to the price it would be a far superior product. Great little Tele and delighted with it.

the guitar is ok but it looks nothing like the one in the photo it is just a plain finish with no grain at all very disapionted

Wonderful guitar for beginners

I no longer have this guitar (sold it years ago), but I was very satisfied with it's quality and sound for the time I had it. The color was beautiful, the sound was ok. The guitar was sturdy and never gave me any problem. I had lots of fun playing it. The reason I sold it has nothing to do with the guitar itself, just personal choice. Nonetheless, I recommend it for beginners or those on a budget.

Can't beat it for the price!

Let's be honest here, it's a tele. And the Fender's at the same price point (a little higher) are no better than this one, in fact these are better than those.

surprisigly good

Didn't expect such a high quality for the price.

Needed a spare guitar for daily usage and became the preferred one now .

Neck is really pleasant and fast .Played few blues/rock songs in a gig recently and neck pick up sounded great.

In my opinion tuners and nut can be improved, which means that they are working ok but we perceive quality difference with higher price guitars , but at the given price they are absolutely acceptable.

Great for the price

The tone and playability of the guitar is great! It's no Fender but not bad at all for the price

Solid Guitar for the Price

This is a solid guitar for the money and een for a little bit more money. It sounds good, the pickups are what one expects for this type of guitar if not a little lower output than I wanted. Construction on mine was top-notch, I couldn't find a flaw.

I can't seem to find a pickguard that will line up with the bridge and neck cut out, It would be nice if it was more compatible with available aftermarket parts. The tuning machines are also not great, but they do the job. It's also pretty heavy.

All in all a solid guitar with a good neck. The finish is lovely, as well.

Harley Benton TE-20 SB Standard Series

Hey this guitar looks great even though it's not a Fender, but for the price, I bought it for a standby so that any of my students who had problems with their guitar, would have another to practice/learn on until theirs was repaired, Having checked out the playability of this guitar, it was set up just right for my style of playing, there was no rough edges on the fretwires, the tuners were OK although the intonation was a little out and adjustment was a question of playing around with the balance of the two screws, but all was ok, The balance of the guitar when held in the playing position tended to be neck heavy, ie the neck dropped downwards which was due to the light body weight/possible a cheaper type of wood used tho make it. But all in All at only 88 euro was a good piece of kit and at that price one cannot expect a build of a rear Fender guitar. Great finish, rosewood fretboard, obviously the strings would need to be changed for a better quaility, even so this guitar sounded great through both my Fender Mustang and Vox valvetronic. They're cheap enough to have as student standby, so I would recommend for a beginner / standby.

Solid Instrument

Good for home practise. Can get wide variety of tones with a decent amp. Overall good choice for practice if not gigging or practising too much

Impressive price/quality ratio

The guitar was strung and setup properly out of the box, the fretboard was a little bit dried out , but a conditioning solved the problem; the tone pot, unlike the volume one, had an abrupt sweep resulting in an "on/off" feeling.But other than these little issues, easily solvable, the instrument is very good; nice even finish, comfortable neck and good machine heads; the sound and the playbility of the TE-20 are the strong points of this guitar; clean sounds and moderate overdriven ones come out of it in a very pleasant way, really faithful to the original (and way more expensive) reference model, with no strange cracklings or excessive hiss at all; it is a real good deal for the little money it costs!

Absolutely recommended for tele lovers on a budget!

Harley Benton Telecaster

Great value for the money. Good quality instrument.

Pretty good!

This TE-20 has the right weight, very comfortable action, good tele sound in the right amp, and it looks good if you're a little lucky and get one with similar pieces of wood glued nicely together. You might need a try or two before you get the right copy but once it's right you would never guess its price if you didn't know it.

Good guitar

I have a Harley Benton HB-35 VB and it's a very good guitar so I decided to get the TE-20 SB since I didn't have a telecaster in my collection. I went with this model not because it was one of the cheaper T-Series guitars but because I liked the finish on it. I wanted a classic looking Telecaster.

The Good:

Impressive pickups, they're thick sounding for single coils, the neck pickup is my favorite, smooth with very good clarity.

Great neck, the neck is actually pretty beefy with a oil finish on the back. If you're looking for a really thin neck this is not it.

Good fretwork, there's a few frets that are slightly high but it's not even worth my time working on them. I adjusted the action to about 4/64ths across all the strings and there's no buzzing.

The Bad:

Three noticeable blemishes on the body finish.

High A and G string slots on the nut. I already fixed that.

Dry fretboard, I already fixed that.

Cheap pickup selector.

Verdict:

I recommend the guitar.

Update: The pickups squeal badly with any type of gain and volume, I don't think they're wax potted.