Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series 3-stars Reviews

Very Good For The Price

I actually quite like the guitar. The wooden body is solid and the tone is pretty good. The only downside is the neck. The frets on mine were very rough. That said, an hour with a fret file on the edges and it felt rather nice. If you want a Tele style guitar for very little money I don't think you can do better.

Good cost performance but way too heavy

For this price not much you can complain about. Overall well made. Looking sharp and sound is good. Personally just found it too heavy to play comfortably for more than 20mins, whether standing or sitting. Note that the "caramelized maple" neck is significantly darker than flamed maple.

Nice for what you pay

Introduction:

I have always wanted a fender telecaster guitar. However, this one is good budget buy.

Rationale:

The finish has many flaws and scratches on the body when I received the guitar.

I had to changes many parts to make this guitar looks and sound better.

I changed tuner locks too. It was loosing the tune.

Conclusion

I would recommend it if you don’t want to spend much on a telecaster.

Heavy with a capital H-E-A-V-Y

13-14 pounds brand new. It's solid ash (2 piece) with fender thickness. The finish is nice and clear compared to the muddy Squiers in the same price range. I've had it for 2 years and haven't quite bonded. I ended up routing cavities in the back of the body to relieve ~4-5 pounds of weight.... i played one show with it and got a neck ache from the strap...

Sounds like a tele-- a bit thin but it takes distortion well. 60 cycle hum is definitely there at high volumes lol

Decent guitar for the price, but not for everyone

First things first I bought this to be upgraded in the future and have experience with setup and troubleshooting guitars, so for me if the neck was good enough I was going to keep in anyway.

The body looks pretty good but the biggest downside is the weight of this thing. I'm ok with that for now since I just play this sitting down at home but will probable buy a new body for it when I find a good deal.

The neck feels good, its a flatter radius than I am used to but its nice.

Downside was the fretwork, it needed a fretlevel badly so that's what I did before going on with a regular setup.

Fretedges were decent and not sharp.

The pickups sound nice when you set them up right(height) but again a big flaw here, the wiring was not correct and had to be fixed.

On my guitar in all the positions both pickups were active, fixed this mistake also.

The nut was cut well and that was a surprise on a cheap guitar, I did replace it with a bone nut since I had to level the frets anyway.

As you can expect for this price, the electronics(pots, switch etc.) and overall hardware are where you save the money.

The biggest issue I have is with the tuners, they seem to "jump" and don't feel great, but they work for now.

Some screws were put in by someone that was in a hurry, but that was fixed easily.

I don't think this can be advertised for absolute beginners that have no experience with setup or troubleshooting guitars, but it can be just the guitar I got.

As mentioned for me this was always going to be a upgrade platform if I liked the neck.

I have put together partscaster with pickups more expensive than this guitar so my expectations weren't that high anyway but the build quality did surprise me its not bad at all and it just "failed" for me in the expected areas, fretwork and used hardware.

So in short, you get what you pay for and if you know your way around setups you should be fine.

If this is your first guitar and/or you have no experience with setups make sure you know someone that does.

Neck pickup does not work

I noticed the neck pickup does not work.

worth it

nice guitar, great guitar for the price , pickups sound like a telecaster should...too heavy for my old back but it's a lottery when you order ..having the option of over or under 7 lbs would be a serious plus ..I'd order a few more if that were the case ...

Nice wood and appearance ,poor quality adjustment on neck also was brought with neck pick up broken!

i expected this guitar to play better,it is not bad though.

Appearance of the guitar is great.

action can be adjusted but it is limited.

Mine came with broken neck pick up.

I talked with the support and was ironic to me.

bad support that day.

There is always a risk if you want to get this guitar.electronics or woods might not be as you wanted.

Good but way too heavy

Had the Te-52 but gave it away cause of the hefty weight. Build and quality was OK but the 3 wood slabs that made the body were nowhere close enough to match and that also did not help me bound with the guitar. Overall, cheap guitars better be painted :)

Not bad

The TE-52 is all around not a bad instrument, I would however say that the one I received was incredibly heavy so for a live situation I would never use it.

Great except high frets somewhere around 17-21 making fret buzz

The base is solid, but has some fret buzz problems if you want to play up to and past the 10-12th fret.

The guitar is a great feeling, chunky, solid base product. My only issue is that a fret or two high up the neck is buzzing. I don't want to send it back to Europe over that (import to US) but it is disappointing. I had to raise the action till it's about 4+ millimeters at least at the 12th fret to get it to stop. So this guitar has the worst action of all my guitars.

So it's hard to play, but it sounds much better than my $150ish Squier and feels close, maybe even better in construction than my $350ish Epiphone. I don't know if it's the pickups or the rest of the construction or what but it is the best single-coil sounding guitar I have ever had.

I'll take the opportunity buy some fret leveling tools and try to fix it myself. In the long run, I guess I might save money learning to fix this stuff myself but I wish could have just enjoyed playing this otherwise great guitar right out of the box.

stunning for the money - a few niggles

I really didn't need another guitar. I have seven already including two Strats, a LP and a Gretsch. I ordered this simply because I wanted to see for myself what these guitars are like. When it arrived I was stunned. So impressive for the money. After setting the truss-rod and bridge saddles how I like 'em, and giving it a set of Fender Bullets, I gave it a thrashing.

Niggles - the back of the neck had a small but pronounced bump, which I think was a hardened drip of lacquer. Sanded off straight away. The slot for the nut hadn't been cut properly and there is a tapered gap behind the top three strings. After checking intonation I filled this with milliput.

I'm not keen on the 'aged' finish on the neck and fingerboard, would prefer plain clear-lacquered pale maple.

Good bits - The bridge pickup is fantastic, the neck pick-up not so much, which is a shame, but what can you expect at this price? I lifted the pickup height to equal the volume of the bridge pickup and it's not too bad, but not great.

The other guitar player in my band has a Fender Elite Tele to compare to, and sure, his guitar sounds a little better. But I could buy fifteen of these guitars for the price of a Fender Elite. His guitar doesn't sound or play fifteen times better. It just doesn't. The finish on the body is no better either.

Unbelievably good value guitar, and any quality control issues can be ironed out if you know what you're doing.

Highly recommended, especially for people who don't want to take expensive instruments to gigs in seedy dives. Like me, for instance.

good deal

needs fret work and is super heavy

I got this guitar as I watched some videos online and loved the sound of it and it had some nice reviews as well. The finish and build quality seemed to be very good although the action was very high, but I figured lowering it shouldn't be an issue.

Unfortunately no matter how I adjusted the truss rod and saddles on the bridge I couldn't really get the action much lower as I immediately got fret buzz - so the action is still too high and I assume it needs fret leveling, which would literally cost me more than half the price of the guitar.

Another issue is the noise of the pickups, as there's a significant hum which I assumed was just a feature of single-coil pickups, but now that I have compared it to two other single-coil guitars I realize that this is not just normal noise, this is something else. This is not a huge issue, but it is a little bit annoying.

Overall, I do like how the guitar feels and sounds, but unfortunately the annoying buzz does irritate me a bit and the high action makes it less than a joy to play.

I guess this is what you'd have to expect for the money, and I can't claim that it's terrible as the finish is nice, it stays in tune, the sound is crisp, and there's no sharp fret ends to tear into your hand - but you do get what you pay for and it's far from perfect.

If you own the skills and the tools to deal with issues like this, it's probably not a big deal, but I don't know how to level frets, nor should I be expected to on a brand new guitar, so for that I can't really recommend it to a beginner, but maybe to a hobbyist.

Good but not good enough

First i puted it in my basket and it had wilkinson pickups ,while it was in my basket they changed product description without informing a client so i ordered it and when it came i realized it has a rosewell pickups which is quit disappointing, quality of wood is good body 3 piece hardwood neck one piece,electonics had problems had to relubricate pots,sounds like 200 to 400 bucks price tag tele, good for beginers and projects

My guitar came with fret buzz

And gritty frets. It's obviously a budget guitar, but I would have been happier with smoother fretwork. Bridge pickup is nice and twangy, neck does the job. Money may be better spend on a used Squier. Heavy tele. Decent finish - reasonable quality hardware. Had high expectations given the reviews, but playing it brought me right back to reality. It's a good quality budget 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.

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.