Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series Reviews

Unbelievable value!

This is one of my favorite guitars. It is simple and elegant. It plays great is a super value! Highly recommended!

Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series

Home, club and bigger live gigs using.

Amazing stuff! Neck and frets finished better as in Big F Player series!

Sound ( still sound checking, but every day more and more addictive).

As my first T Style guitar- great option.

3piece body is ... .

For the price, the sound and looks are fine. Very good. However, you might want to think about how to connect the wood grain of the three-piece body. The wood grain is oriented differently at the edges, which spoils the appearance of the product.

Great quality and price

The guitar looks like an instrument way above its price point with a high gloss body and satin comfortable neck. Strings are ok but i changed them to 10's and lowered the action as was although totally playable, much better when lowered. It sounds great on all settings and its got real weight to it. For the price it really is the business. Nuff said.

Everything one expects from a T style guitar!

Just blown away. Fit and finish is top notch. Pickups are fantastic. Mine arrived in the USA in perfect condition. Its a beautiful guitar. In my honest opinion this guitar will blow other T-style guitars out of the water that cost 10x the amount.

FYI: It is fairly heavy but I expected it because 1. its ASH and 2. I own the Harley Benton ST-90SA Swamp Ash DLX Series which is kinda the same guitar but an S type.

I own 8 Harley Bentons and haven't been disappointed yet.

A Far Better Guitar Than it's Price Would Suggest

Having read the great reviews for this guitar, I decided to scratch the itch I had for a Telecaster style guitar. The main attributes for me are build quality and through-body stringing on a vintage-looking and feeling guitar. After-all. I have a very clear idea of how I need this thing to sound, so the pickups will be swapped eventually.

On arrival, it was found to be very well packed and had turned up in two days with the packaging undamaged. The guitar itself has survived the journey perfectly, so that is really great. It plays and feels much better than I thought it would and after it had acclimatised properly, I embarked on setting it up to my preference. The frets all needed a bit of polishing with 3500 wet and dry, micromesh and Autosol to rid the roughness on string bends. The frets are beautifully level anyhow, so it was an easy enough job, only to be expected on such an inexpensive guitar. I gave the neck a tiny bit more relief and was amazed how low I was able to take the action. Intonation was pretty much perfect out of the box. Plugging in, I found it pretty quiet for a single coil machine and to my utter surprise, once I'd found the best height, those Roswell pickups gave me exactly what I was looking for in heaps! I'm never going to change them as they want for nothing. The body is is absolutely beautiful, solid and a little, (but not too much) heavy. Cosmetically there were a couple of flaws: It had been damaged at the headstock and first fret with an indentation hehind the nut where the bottom E string had been knocked into it. The finish had also been removed on the edge of the neck and headstoch around it slightly. There was also an inch-long, fairly deep scratch through the finish on the front, which I ran a bead of clear poly lacquer into, flattened it back and polished it until it completely dissapeared. I didn't consider these things good enough reason to return such a great guitar, especially at that price-point. In summary, this really has exceded my expectations to the point that I'd consider it the perfect Tele-style guitar for me. It would stand up against any I've ever played before it and my Gretsch guitars aren't really getting a look in any more. So much guitar for so little money.

Сlassic sound

If you are looking for the classic sound of a telecaster - you found it, at least I definitely found.

A real quality and well-sounding Telecaster for a very small price.

A real quality and well-sounding Telecaster for a very small price! :) Looks and sounds like an expensive guitar! Very solid and heavy. Only a small polishing of frets is needed.

PROS: Absolutely amazing Tele!

CONS: personally for me - not found! :)

This is a great value for money.

feel and plays like a fender telecaster . i can't find a thing wrong with it.

Well, it's a solid body Tele, as good as any I've owned at 5 to 10 times the price. Plays great, sounds great (subjectively speaking), and has killer sustain. I love it.

I was pleasantly surprised with the beauty of the construction of this Tele-style guitar. For the price, my expectations were low and was not prepared for the quality of this instrument . As a professional musician, I scoffed at "knock-offs", MIMs and Asian built guitars, but this TE-52 is making me eat my words.

It needed little tweaking other than lowering the action and setting the intonation. The sound was perfect and way above my expectations, even having that country twang, or a nice thick rock sound.

The only gripe I have is that it is very chunky and slinging that solid

weight over my shoulders is a tough task after a couple of hours. Highly recommended!

Guitar

Got this guitar, and am very happy. I am loving it. I will buy from them again. Ooo yea the guitar was the te 52 vintage series

Sounds awesopme, very heavy.

As i saw a lot of reviews and talkings about this model on YT and internet i can confirm it sounds really like a true telecaster should.

neck pickup is round and almost jazzy, bridge pickup is snarly and extremely agressive and clangy. Love it!

the body finish is perfect, the neck is in satin and feels good. the frets came sounded on the edges ,maybe a little roughly but functionally perfect. the wood figuring was so-so , but i saw worst.

Cons: it weights a lot for a tele, but i like heavy guitars and neck dives are just a no-thing.

damn good!

i played it every now and then because the action was perfect for me, sound was awesome. I like it, I like it. The tuner was a bit easy to get untune..maybe because it's new..but overall i will highly recommend it.

Super Tele

Initial thoughts....I couldn't believe the quality of finish on this guitar. It is super. Wonderful grain with no blemishes whatsover. There is a sound comparison on YT with a Tele that is ten times more expensive... check it out... you will be surprised. No big deal but some might find the action a tad on the high side but for me it is fine. Again there are simple Tutorials on YT on how to adjust the action to suit your requirements. A great sounding and looking guitar delivered from Germany to England for £115...are you kidding me??? Many thanks.

Wow! Really, just wow!

WOW! Seriously, wow!

I read about "heavy", well yes it is a slab of Ash and that has weight, but no more than my Les Paul or similar, and it sits perfectly balanced. I can only presume it would be similar with a strap and standing... the office isnt ready for that spectacle :) (I can see the body is made from 3 pieces of timber).

The ash wood used for the body has a lovely grain - luck of the draw I know, but seriously it is a handsome looking guitar. The finish isn't too orange, just a really nice gloss.

The fit and finish are first rate, no gaps, a snugger fitting neck in to pocket you would hard pressed to find, no wonky bits, just a very well finished instrument.

The neck isn't that chunky at all, less so than a Les Paul or a ES series, and about on par with my 12" radius Strat neck. The satin finish is pleasant on the hand, far nicer than a thick gloss, and the fretboard feels good too. Very slick.

I have no sharp frets, they all appear clean and bright, and no choking on bends. No need for any work at all. Amazingly the strings are all clean and bright, no warble at all... I will change them to 10s though as is my preference.

Yes the action was a bit high when it came out of the box, but 5 mins with a hex key and all is perfect.

Intonation is pretty darn good out of the box, although I will put some compensated brass saddles in just to get things a little more accurate.

The neck is true, and when I put some 10's on I will swap the plastic nut for a bone nut/tusq xl to help tuning stability. I'll no doubt give the truss rod a tweak once it settles with the 10s, but I can see no reason why the action won't remain as good and low as it now is.

The vintage style tuners work really well, not the same standard as the Road Worn 60s ones on my Strat, but seriously they have fine enough adjustment to do the job, smooth in operation and have held tuning so far.

I can't comment on the pickups (Roswell branded), nor the volume and tone pots, as I have no amp at the office, but let's be honest, that is 10 mins with a soldering iron and £15 if the pots/cap needed switching out.

All the chrome is highly polished and looks great... not a corroded screw in sight.

So, to summarise, I am absolutely amazed, this guitar was shipped to me for £115... take off shipping, take off Retailer mark up, take of freight costs from China, etc... ow in the world can they make such a playable and well finished instrument for so very little...? Well I guess that is a question of consumer ethics.

I wasn't expecting a lot, I got an awesome guitar, seriously blown away.

If you want a cheap guitar to leave at the office, if you are buying your first guitar, if you just fancy a bit of fun and fancy taking a punt... do it!

It isn't a £1000 guitar, but I have seen plenty of £300 to £500 guitars that weren't a patch on this.

Wow, just wow!

Sharpened telecaster.

It 's been more than a year since I bought it . The quality of the guitar for this money is not better to find . The wood of the body and neck is Super . The weak point of the guitar is the pickups . Weak at the exit for me . Timbral normal . Replaced the neck with a humbucker , with a single cutoff . I also changed the bridge to a modern Gotoh . And the internal wiring on a silver - plated cable . Now the sound is very cool . This Telecaster is now focused on modern music .

This thing is a steal!

I have been thinking about adding a new guitar to the collection & I didn't have a T-style. For the price, I thought I had nothing to lose giving this a go, because at the worst I could use it as a base to add to (new pickups, bridge etc). However, I am amazed at how good it is for the money. The finish is flawless (the satin neck feels worn-in & is really comfortable), it plays brilliantly, and it sounds absolutely superb - no need to replace the Roswell pickups which give exactly the sound I was looking for in a vintage T-style.

No negatives at this price point: you don't get a single/double piece of wood for the body, but I would not expect to. I would personally prefer a slightly more VOS type finish rather than high gloss for a vintage style instrument, but that's just taste. Overall I will definitely be buying another Harley Benton.

I really wanted to give 5 stars but...

I will start by saying the TE-52 is, in my opinion, the best bang for the buck "T-style" guitar out there! The features you get for the price you pay is unbeatable!

However, mine showed up with obvious issues. First, the input jack nut was obviously loose when shipped and at some point during shipping it came off allowing the jack to fall into the body. Also, there were two deep scrapes in the finish caused by the nut bouncing around inside the bag.

The guitar was packaged in a guitar box that was placed inside a shipping box, the packing materials used to secure the one box inside the other was insufficient. The guitar box inside was moving freely within the shipping box. This allowed for what appears to be two major impacts to the guitar itself. The most notable being a 1.5cm ding at the very top of the headstock and two very small stress cracks at the neck joint. Honestly, I am only adding these things in hope that changes will be made for better protection in shipping & to attest the durability of these guitars!

The guitar plays & sounds great & built like a tank!