Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series Reviews

Nice guitar - after a setup

APPERANCE - The HB TE-52 NA is my first Telecaster syle guitar. It arrived in good shape (Pacific Northwest of the US). When I took it out of the box I immediately noticed a black smudge on the wood which had been lacquered over. Everything else looked very good.

PLAYABILITY ? The tone of the guitar exceeds my expectations for the low price. I especially like the sound of the neck pickup. The pickup selector and tuners also work well. After a few days of playing, the sharp edges of the frets became very noticeable and my hand was getting cut. I also found several frets that were too high and causing some fret buzz. I decided to do a fret leveling, and edge dressing and polished, set action and intonnation. There are a lot of good how-to videos on youtube. It was a pretty easy project and now I really enjoy playing this guitar. It has become my favorite.

Overall ? I am happy with guitar and would recommend it if you are willing to put a just few hours in to set it up properly and know you saved a lot of money.

totally worth!

using at home and just compared it with fender tele deluxe and I havent noticed any big difference in sound, maybe a bit quieter but deluxe has high signal pickups so probalby thats the difference. I'm totally delighted.

Outstanding

Forget the low price. This guitar would be good value at four times the price.

Compared to "full fat" fender telecasters its hard to spot the difference. Wilkinson pickups are fine and give good telecaster sound.

Well finished. Played great straight out of the box. Professional guitarist who played it just kept muttering £99? Really? No, how much was it really? Can't be £99.

one minor glitch

1 screw was missing from top of pick guard. hole is there so maybe was stripped. looks, plays and sounds great.

On balance.... think

Curiosity and the Tele-shaped hole in my guitar pile forced my hand with this purchase.

I have no problems with playing a bargain bucket guitar in a live situation or just for fun... IF it can cut it and this review is as every other review I write, simply honest.

First, let's get the cost defence that seems to be at the heart of those reviewers who dribble about how great these are for the price.

Yes, it is a low value item but;

Out of the box,

the frets need crowning,

the strings are unusable,

the pickups are garbage,

it was wired incorrectly,

the ferrules (string through at the back) are not aligned,

the tuners are woeful.

In the first few days I've crowned the frets, rewired as the factory had effectively wired both pickups out of phase for every switch position, replaced the awful plastic nut and shimmed the neck pocket.

It now plays much better but... and here's where you need to think carefully about this... you will want to upgrade almost every part.

If you're after a platform for messing about, it's OK, but you will need to mess about a lot before it even becomes passable.

If you want something playable out-of-the-box, look elsewhere.

You pay little, get a lot... but it really is, overall, pretty poor quality.

Very impressed

I,ve only been playing guitar for aound 18 months,so for me its a difficult one .So far i,ve owned a encore strat copy a yamaha pacifica 012. firstly the look of the the guitar is superb.I have had to retune it slightly. I,ve got a new practice amp.On all 3 postions the guitar sounds very good.A friend of mine who has been playing telecasters for nearly 30 years,also gave it 5 stars.He was also impressed with the price too. You really cant go wrong with this.

really nice tele copy

Lovely looking guitar, natural finish looks great.

Quality strings.

Nice sound from both pickups.

Action slightly higher than my preference but I believe this is normal for a tele style guitar.

Feels great in the hand, tunes well.

Only minor, minor issue is a slightly larger than normal gap where the neck joins the body, but this is very minor.

This is the 4th different tele copy I've owned. All of the others were around the same price, none of them looked, felt, or sounded as nice.

For this price there's nothing better.

Great Guitar

The guitar arrived well packaged and quickly.

What a beautiful looking guitar well finished and unmarked.

A two piece body and high gloss finish.

Plenty of positive and the tone.

Not so good was the fret ends and a couple of high frets.

Once I had dressed the fret ends and levelled the neck a quick polish all round and re string a fantastic guitar appeared.

It was so good I ordered another.

Too sum up : how they can offer a guitar of this quality for the price charged is a great feat on its own a small amount of work will achieve a fantastic looking and playing instrument.

Highly recommended.

AndyU

Awesome guitar with a few minor flaws

First off, I'm very happy with my purchase, it plays very well after a quick setup (string height, intonation, nut adjustment).

I've read how some got almost perfect guitars, I was not so lucky it seems. Finish on mine was full of bubbles, scratches, blemishes. Neck has a small 0,5mm gap at body joint, bottom screws are in crooked, edges of joint have very little cracks and chips, but no biggie. Body is a 3 piece, can't really tell from the top side, but side & back you can clearly see the lines, content with this. Guitar is buzzing a bit, will rewire it tomorrow as I suspect something is wrong with the grounding.

Ok now for the good stuff... OH MY GOD, what a great playing guitar. Neck is pure joy, not too fat not too thin, perfect. Pickups are great, I don't see myself changing them. Tuners and bridge work great too and will not change anything.

Overall great axe, sounds amazing. I might have gotten a lemon when it comes to the finish but still very happy. Buy it, seriously, it's an amazing value and it will make you smile.

Unbelievable guitar for the price

I bought this guitar for a student of mine because the price was right for a beginner. When it arrived my jaw dropped. You could easily pay 3 or 4 times more for this guitar and still be happy with the quality. Setup was great out of the box too. Highly recommended. Looks the business too.

Amazing quality for the price...... and then some !!

Out of the box the build quality appears pretty much flawless. Body finish is immaculate mirror gloss? no visible dents, scratches or scuffs etc. If these are either two or three piece ash, I can't see any join ? it looks like one piece of wood.. Nice chunky but comfy neck and all hardware seems to do its job well. Fret job feels good with no sharp edges that I can feel at all and nut seems well cut. This IS a heavy guitar, but not an issue as I'm just a home player . this guitar just feels amazingly solid. All the classic TE tones are here and the Wilkinson p/ups definitely seem worth the extra bit of money.

A couple of very minor issues. Fitted strings show some oxidation and feel a little rough.Frets look and feel like they could do with a bit of a better dress or maybe even just polishing up will fix this . Some grime or gunk on frets which may be the cause and greyish blob of what I guess is polishing compound on the fingerboard which looks like it will pick or polish off. Also control knobs seated at very slightly different heights and volume a little bit off being true parallel to body. The very highest black dot fret marker is a bit smudged around the edges which again may well polish out.These are very very minor and wouldn't normally even notice them. Any of the above issues I'm sure could be found on guitars 2 or 3 times the price.

Who should by this ?

I have a few mid lower range electrics ?92 Squier Strat MIJ , Epiphone LP Special, Yamaha and promised myself my next guitar would be a ?proper? TE. However, when I heard about HB guitars and what you get for a very low price I changed my thinking. I'm an occasional home player who likes to have variety of guitars for different moods and tones etc. I don't gig and whilst this may not be the sort of guitar that would survive years of touring without some upgrading, it does what I need it to and does it very very well. Seriously when you look at what you get for the money, its amazing how HB are doing this. Forget the name on the headstock, based on feel, tone and build alone you would think you're playing something a lot more expensive . I've never played a ?real? TE or vintage or custom shop model so can't say what they?re like but it's hard to see how the big manufacturers justify some of their prices when you see what you get with this HB.

Get one !!!

A very good guitar.

I am very pleased with the TE-52. It is an excellent Telecaster style guitar. Never mind that it is 'cheap', this is an excellent guitar full stop. I've owned many Tele's over the years, both Fender models, Squier models, and various other brands. It's my favourite guitar style. This natural Tele sounds great with its Wilkinson pickups, good woods and hardware. It plays and sounds like 'the real thing'.

I was happy with everything about the guitar, except the nut. It wasn't cut well. The action was too high at the lower frets, causing the notes / chords played down near the nut, to go sharp. I took the guitar to my favourite guitar shop, and the luthier there put in a new high quality nut. It's now one of my favourite guitars. I have trouble putting it down I enjoy it so much.

For anyone looking for a natural style Tele, at a great price, I really recommend that you consider this guitar.

With lots of cheaper guitars, often they are bought with the intention of replacing parts to improve them. This guitar is fine just as it is. The hardware is good. The pickups sound great. I may be tempted to upgrade the wiring and pots at some stage, as this guitar is 'worth' doing up to keep. I certainly will be keeping mine.

06.03.2016 update:

This has become my go to guitar. The more I play this guitar, the more pleased I am with it. It is a seriously good instrument. Aside from the issue I had with mine with the nut - which was easily remedied, this guitar plays flawlessly. I can only heartily recommend this model Tele to anyone looking for this particular style. It's excellent.

Solid and chunky

Having played several of its cousins by the celebrated USA manufacturer, I have to say that this one is a treat.

There is so much weight in the body and the neck is perfect.

The Wilkinson pickups do a passable job and the only real weak point is perhaps the pickup selector switch which does feel a little flimsy.

Still, it's not as if you can't get replacements for every part of this model easily and cheaply, so it's a small price to pay.

Compared to the USA or even the Mexican models by the Famous guitar manufacturer, it certainly is a small price to pay.

I was looking for something to make me play like I would play a Tele and this does just that.

Top marks.

Great value for the money spend

have this tele for a week now.

after a fast delivery i was pleasantly surprise when unpacking to what a light and nice looking guitar i found in the box.

at first check:

intonation was spot on.

nut is cut correctly

neck to body pocket is a tight fit

alignment neck to bridge correct

fret?s where in good state, none are sticking out the side no leveling needed

neck relief correct, truss rod turns freely

original strings where mildly rusted and sounded dead

neck had not been buffed, looked dull, finish felt like sand paper

pickup selector works correctly

pickups sound good

volume works correctly

tone did not work correctly

jack works correctly

some tuning pegs turn hard and all have a bit of play, but keep in tune

soldering connections by them self where good

following needed to be done:

buffed the neck, the nice wood grain came out well, feels very smooth now

tone pot was solders incorrectly, normally center lug holds capacitor to ground and lead go?s to lug three; it was vice versa, ones corrected tone worked as expected

pot?s where also inverted, normally pot(A)(log) for volume pot(B)(lin) for tone, originally mounted (B) for volume (A) for tone.

new strings(original ones broke after about 15 minutes)

neck mounting holes in body where to tight(no free play at all), as it was i was mounting the neck plate to the body before actually trying to mount the neck to the body.

after opening these mounting holes slightly up i could mount the neck as expected

neck cutout in scratch plate had to open?d up a tiny bit, was a to tight

personal preference:

lowered action

adjusted neck relief

adjusted pickup height

to resume

overal fit and finish is good, no treads where strip?t, screw?s where all tight and none over tight

guitar weight 3,6kg(nice), body made out of four blocks, woodgrain decently matched

lacquer not to thick

body resonates well, good sustain

pots lack a bit of sensitivity

string ferrules drilled crooked

neck medium C shaped

guitar well balanced

best ¤129,00 i have ever spend

Excellent Tele, bargain at the price.

I was hoping for a cheap Tele which I could perhaps customise a little, maybe changing the neck pickup for a humbucker for a better jazz tone, that sort of thing. So I wasn't expecting too much by way of quality. Sure it looks the part but who knows.

But I'm blown away by the quality. It's every inch the Telecaster and the two Wilkinson pickups provide the full range of sounds from bridgy twang to a fairly smooth neck sound. The controls are good quality and smooth and the three-way gives a good clean selection.

It has a very comfortable neck for playing and the action is low but there's no buzzing. The set-up, the intonation, the action, all done really well. The frets are set really well with no rough edges and it feels good to play. The natural sustain is excellent and the strings are reasonably decent. It's exactly as heavy as an original and feels well-balanced, so it's comfortable to play. Oh, and it looks good too. It had come all the way from Germany to Spain but when I took it out... it was perfectly in tune! So the tuners work fine.

I've only played it for around five or six hours but if there's a downside to this guitar, I haven't found it yet. I don't know of any other tele that comes close to this even at a much higher price. Recommended.

guitar looks // sound // and feels great really nice to play great price nice tele finish looks cool this is my 6th h.b guitar there all good guitars im going to order the hb jazz next

My Brother might have to prise it from my hands

Bought him this for Christmas (Don't tell him), love at first sight, love at first feel, this guitar is gorgeous. Forget the guidance on writing a good review, this guitar played from the box, caused quite a few jaws to drop just by looking at her, dedicated lovers of the brand just sighed and held her close whilst wondering at her honey voice (et al), the way she was built and the sheer magnificence that is, "Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series". I got the swamp ash strat, but I still look longingly at the sultry Blonde Telecaster sitting quietly in the corner. All joking aside a superb guitar.

Well for that price, but does not match the photos on the website.

The neck is glossy on the pictures on the website, but actually no. Sad.

In the picture two retainers, actually just one. If I knew in advance - would have ordered an additional retainer. Bad.

Tuners installed not those as shown on the photo. It is unpleasant.

The holes for the strings in the bridge and body do not match (a little bit). Could be better. Not fatal.

The body of the guitar is made of 4-5 pieces of wood (pictured are only 2 or 3). No luck.

Rusty strings - have to change. This is normal.

Nice heavy guitar, sounds great, neck is straight, fretwork is ok.

At this price impossible to find something that sounds better.

Instrument is very different from the images on the website.

excellent, cheap guitar

Excellent guitar does just what you need, Tuners could be slightly better.

But we have changed these out for some Fender locking ones.

This was the 3rd or 4th Harley Benton purchased and no doubt we will add another at some point.

Great guitar

Not a guitar expert by any means, this was my first electric guitar - for the money I really cannot fault it - set up seemed quite nice out of the box, did not require any frets to be tidied or anything like that. Plays great. Feels much more expensive than the price, nice sound. Really can't complain about this instrument.