Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series Reviews

The best surprise of the year!

I brought this on a whim and was instantly blown away by how good this guitar is for so little money! Needless to say my mexican tele is now sold and this has taken its place! There is an overall a great feel to the whole guitar, neck has an amazing playability factor and action is very very good, the body is solid and the neck joint is solid too, no buzzing or dead frets, the tuning pegs actually work, the bridge is great all the electrics work like they should it really is my go to do it all guitar. Classic tele sound in spades! The best buy I've brought in years and will be buying many more very soon!

Very nice guitar

I love this Harley Benton TE-52 its exactly what I wanted, it has a really nice bright sound which I couldn't achieve with my other guitars. If you want quality at a very reasonable price this tele is a bargain.

Great!!! Please buy it!!!

Let's be honest: It's not the best guitar in the world, obviously. The tuning machines on mine were really crappy, for instance. Other than that, it's awesome! It sounds really good, the build quality is great (It's a heavy son of a gun, though...). The wood is great, the paint job is gorgeous, the pickups are Wilkinson...

It doesn't sound like a Fender, but come on! It's 129 freaking euros! It's got to get 5 stars! If you buy 170? worth of pickups, tuning machines, pot, etc., you got yourself an awesome guitar, that will sound just like a fender! And for 300?!!! It's crazy!

The best value for the money!

Harley Benton TE-52NA

The only ting that's cheap about this is the price. Construction is solid , had to file one or two of the frets as they were protruding ,but I've seen similar on Fender guitar . Sounds and plays just like a telecaster should,

I've used it for clean and overdriven/distorted sounds and it sounded great. I've played it solidly for blocks of up three hours and it was quit e comfortable maybe a little on the heavy side , no flaws in the finish. Neck has a satin finish and its probably not as good in my opinion as the TE-80 which I also recently acquired. The pickups sound good ,I honestly expected them to be the weakest link , but I'm quite satisfied with them.

I can't think of anything out of the box that in my opinion warrants an upgrade!

Excellent t-style guitar

Wow! What a surprisingly good guitar!

I confess I had my doubts about getting such a cheap guitar, but I must say I'm REALLY impressed by it.

The neck is a lovely satin finish & is pleasingly chunky in the hand. There were a few imperfections in the finish, but a quick wipe with fine sanding paper fixed them easily. Fretwork is fine and after a quick setup to lower the action it plays great.

The body is made of three pieces of Ash & is reassuringly weighty.

The electrics are good. The Wilkinson pickups are bright and clear, the tone and volume controls are responsive and crackle free. There IS some hum, but that's to be expected from single coils.

My only criticism is that the strings fitted seemed to mainly consist of rust and dirt, but as I prefer 10s to the stock 9s I was replacing them anyway.

To sum up: fancy trying a T-style guitar but don't feel the need to pay the premium for a "name", take a punt on this: you won't be disappointed.

Uh! too heavy for the ash, but plays well, best in this price range, will be much better with upgraded electronics and tuners, if you put kluson bridge (just 16euro for great quality) it will be even better. Pickups are medium quality.

Too thick poly finish, first what I done with it, stripped down this from ash and refinish it with tru oil, so now it has open pores and will dry faster, because it is too heavy, so it's not even dryed before finish had done.

Neck is good too, action is high as any other new guitar, I done leveling and polishing of frets, put tusq nut, shimmed neck. Now it plays, sounds and looks very well and a lot of fun in modding.

Great guitar for modding.

Very good for little money

Harley Benton have done it again, a very well made guitar for a small price. First off the weight, really heavy to pick up but once you've strapped it on you barely notice it. The pickups are top notch though the bridge pup is quite harsh even at its lowest setting but you do get the classic twang associated with this style. The neck is niceand solid, didn't like the 'c' shape on my mexican strat so a bit apprehensive about this but it feels good in your hand. One change I have made are the saddles, I changed mine from the steel to brass, not convinced it makes a difference in sound but they look better in my eyes, maybe do the tuners at some point in the future as I'm not a fan of the sloyted ones HB use.

Overall a very capable instrument, could be a touch heavy for some people but I find it reassuringly hefty. Maybe the p/ups could be upgraded if you were gigging it regularly but for a guitar of this price you couldn't go wrong.

vintage series H.B. telecaster

As a telecaster type guitar, features are few, but as you open the box and lift

out your new guitar , you can't help appreciate its build quality and weight,a proper

instrument ! Mine required a major polish of the neck, frets and fingerboard - rough

overspray, and heavily tarnished frets, otherwise very nicely finished.

Plugging it in is the best bit ! This sounds.... like a Telecaster

A Excellent Guitar For The Money

As i mentioned in my other review I wanted a couple of tele's I could use for a halloween gig, nothing silly priced as they would properly end up trashed so I ordered the TE-30 and The TE 52. 3 working days later they arrived.

On opening the box my first impressions were wow the TE-52 is beautiful, The body is made of 2 nicely figured pieces of ash that are center joined and stained a mid 50's vintage butterscotch which is flawless . This was areal surprise as I expected a multi piece body with possibly a veneer on the front.

The neck is maple with a nice c section to it and nice a satin finish that feels nearly as good as my relic tele. The fret however were quite uneven but I always budget in a professional setup so this was not a problem.

The bridge is a nice sturdy wilkinson ashtray bridge. The tuners are wilkinson vintage kluson style and were quite good so I kept them(may change them further down the journey). The control plate also was quite responsive but I always upgrade the pots and wiring.

The pickups surprised me the they are both ceramic pickups and I have to say they do a good job of getting the classic Tele sound, the neck pickup is clear and articulate but not thin. The let down is the bridge pickup, this ceramic pickup doesn't really have what it takes. Its a nice sound but some of the telecaster natural brightness is lost with this pickup

The guitar is now back from its setup and it's fantastic, I changed the bridge pickup for a wilkinson WVOB that costs about £30 and the sound transformed. This guitar is now my go to telecaster leaving my relic 52 abandoned in its case

Incredible guitar!

I bought this guitar because i read that some people say that is really impressive.

and really that's it !

Unboxing your new telecaster, you have just to deal with a little setup with trussrod, octaves , and height of strings, but i also have to perfom those operations on my Fender Baja (from the custom shop! crazy!!)

The guitar looks very pretty, the wood and color is good looking, plastics are ok, the Wilkinson logo on pickups its a sticker, be careful or you loose it! :D

controls seems sturdy and knobs really responds well.

the neck is the impressive part of the guitar.

satin finish (that i love) give a lovely feeling with this gear, well finished, frets are ok.

the hardware in general is ok, tuners do the work good, maybe the saddles could be in brass instead of the chrome one, but vibrations go thru the body without problems.

The body...the weight is really high, its a guitar not for small guys, use straplock and large straps!

the nut is plastic, maybe in a future i replace with a bone one.

the sound is really impressive, maybe you pay five times more another branded guitar without reach the same good vibrations!

if you like the tele and the color you cannot be wrong, be careful for the weight and remember that you need a gigbag!

This guitar is pure awesomnes! Worth a lot more money than it`s sold for... really. Finnish on it is like mirror... you can literally see your reflection in it. Hardware is also good.. no complaints about it. There is absolutely no need to upgrade it to better tuners or bridge... even intonation is as it should be out of the box. Action is also nice and low out of the box. I only lowered high and low E string just a bit (one turn of allen key really) because I prefer it that way. Neck is beautifuly finnished, all frets are leveled and crowned. Oh and guitar is heavy. I mean HEAVY... which is only a good thing because it`s really sturdy.

This is my 1st Harley Benton and Telecaster guitar (i also have 2 epiphone LP`s) and definitely not my last one! I really love the tone of it (soo versatile) and it`s worth buying it.

Rock on!

Surprisingly good quality on low price!

It is arrived only couple days after the order. More of everything I ordered and came packaged in a professional manner. The appearance is brilliant, the finish is highly shiny. The pickguard and switch house have a stong plastic protector cover, what slightly heavy to remove, need to take time if You do not want to scrape the finish. The quality of the setup control is poor, the fret level required some afterworks. The pickups are extremely good, You can find some comparsion video on Youtube, sometimes Wilkinsons sounds better then Seymours but the price significantly lower. The body is premium quality, little heavy (as the ashwood is heavy?) but well balanced. The neck is good, the radius provides a comfortable playing. The mounting of neck and fretboard is good and the frets are not required any afterwork. The twisting of the neck should be checked, luckily mine is ok. The only objection are the machine heads, i will replace them. My personal opinion is: for the price it is a very good guitar! If i based on that some Fender on low price also made in China, (!) this choice was not dissapointment.

Can't fault it. Needed a little set up. Not a fan of jumbo frets but that's more of a preference than fault! No sharp edges on the frets. Finish is flawfless. Holds tune very well so far. Pickups sound great. very heavy but no worse than a les paul!

Harley Benton TE-52

Lovely guitar at a very low price. Plays and sounds not unlike the real thing. Body just a little heavy.

A Perfect Standard

The Telecaster is a classic. Much copied and adapted over the years. The HB TE-52 NA is the best copy of the original I have ever played. This guitar suited me perfectly, the neck is fantastic, pick-ups great and a finish giving it the right look. It is a heavy guitar, but feels dead right. Highly recommended.

Peanut-butter delight.

A wonderfully finished guitar, plays great and sound fantastic. Beautiful PEANUT-BUlTTER colour, good enough to eat. It feel a little heavy, but over all is well balanced. A future addition to your "Tele range" could be the TE-52NA with a "Mini-Humbucker" pickup at the neck, LOVE THE FINISH !!.

Basically a good guitar for the money, but will need some work

Basically a good guitar for the money, let down by poor quality tuners and mine desperately needed some fretwork. The plus side is good quality wood, in the body and neck, classic though body stringing and great sounding pickups. The downside is as with most high production cheap guitars, the quality control on the setup is very poor, and my guitar needed a fret dress to remove the very sharp edges, and a fret level to get the action to a reasonable standard without buzzing. The only hardware disappointment is the machine heads which feel stiff and unresponsive, so I’ll probably upgrade those soon. If you buy one of these guitars I would budget for a decent setup and fret level/dress.