Harley Benton TE-30 BE Standard Series 5-stars Reviews

I was not expecting what I got!

Wow! I am blown away with what was in the box. I was not expecting something this good for $78.00 US dollars! The weight threw me off right away, I did not expect such a heavy guitar for such a cheap price. Real Ash body, 3 piece but proper 3 piece, one center piece and a piece on each side. No fake veneer top and back to fake a one piece. The Wood grain figuring is beautiful. The fit and finish is excellent! It came correctly intonated and the frets correctly dressed.

Now I should say the reason why I would purchase such a cheap guitar being that I own like 30 already. I am always on the look out for a decent quality guitar for a cheap price that I can customize and make amazing and better than, in this case any Squire. I always wanted to try Harley Benton, and it did not disappoint. For the money you can't go wrong but as a stand alone out of the box..Meh... it will do for the person who just like to play around. But this guitar makes a Affinity Squier Tele for $150 dollars seem like a $30 dollar guitar.

The neck and body are great. Pickguard and some of the hardware will do just fine. Things to upgrade; Pickups, pots and switches. Tuners nut and saddles and the string trees. Do that and its perfect. I already purchased some vintage style tuners, compensated brass saddles and roller string trees. Next with be a brass nut with a full pickup and controls swap.

Very nice guitar

The shipping was fast, 2/3 days and the guitar was well packaged. Cosmetically the colour isn't quite as pink as the photo depicted. The finnish is a transluscent high gloss that you can see the wood grain through, overall a very unique looking guitar that i personally have never seen before. I am not sure about the pearl scratchplate and will change it I think. My one and only minor gripe with the guitar is the weight, weighing in somewhere between 8 and 9lbs but im getting used to it.

Sound wise the guitar does a very good telecaster impression, the two pick up selector and tone pot let you dial in a multitude of different timbres.

The guitar plays very well. I lowered the action slightly with the included key and put on a set of Ernie Ball skinny top heavy bottoms and it became a delight to play. I've had it for one week and I literally have not put it down. I was apprehensive about buying a guitar for the price, but I am happy I did. Good stuff

Harley Benton brilliance

I can't believe a guitar of this quality is so cheap to buy, at this price point,

This is a very aesthetically nice looking guitar which has great components that do the job very well , a squier affinity strat is twice the price and not as good in my opinion, the Harley Benton has warm mids and can produce that famous telecaster twang if requested to do so.

This guitar has a lovely pearlescent pick guard and a lovely satin neck, a good weight and good components added all together make for a great guitar for beginner or expert

Highly recommend .

Took delivery yesterday.....

I ordered the B-stock of the Benton TE-30 BE knowing that there may be some scratches and dings on the guitar.....post office delivered yesterday and upon looking over the guitar I found no major problems.

For the price savings the B-stock can not be beat, especially if you plan on using it as the 'base' for making a modified and customized piece!

An excellent guitar, with excellent value for money

When looking at this guitar i was at first skeptical of the features and quality that other reviewers advertised.

However the guitar delivers on every single feature it promises.

It has a beautiful blonde/honey ash finish with finely finished components, with no signs of poor craftsmanship or sloppy assembly.

The pickups are of a surprising quality with quite high output and are suitable for both clean and distorted tones.

The guitar stays in tune relatively well and overall the preset action isn't too bad but can easily be altered to suit a players needs.

The strings that come with the guitar are really the only "bad" talking point. It is obvious that they aren't of a premium quality and they do have a tinny sound, but they can easily be changed and the value of the guitar in itself with all of its outstanding features far outway this small issue.

Overall, an outstanding guitar with great value for money as a first guitar or a worthy addition to the collection of a more adept player.

Cracking tele copy

What a nice piece of kit, solid, nice finish.

No sharp frets, great tuners.

I would highly recommend this to anyone from beginners to more experienced players out there.

At this price its a steal!!

Buy one now.

Excellent Tele style guitar

I've been looking for a Tele style guitar for a while, deciding how much I wanted to spend on it..... If I'd known that one as cheap as this would be so good then I would have stopped looking and just bought it a long time ago!

This guitar is a surprisingly authentic replica of a classic given the price. It plays lovely, the neck feels great in the hand and the whole thing balances out great, even though the body is pretty heavy. Set up out of the box feels absolutely fine to me, no frets buzz, it plays nicely across the whole range of notes.

For sound, this model is very, very bright. It's got a very trebly "twang" to it. That twang can be toned down by switching to the bridge pickup and turning the tone control down obviously, but it still has a certain bite to the sound. No bad thing! At this price, this is a guitar that I've bought for a particular character, at has not disappointed at all.

I've paid a lot more in the past for guitars that play a lot worse than this one does. I wanted to add the Tele style brightness and twang as an option in my collection and I'm amazed that I managed to do it at this price!

The only thing I will almost certainly change at some point is the scratch plate... It's not really my taste, but that is purely my taste, entirely aesthetic, and doesn't affect the quality of the product at all! The cost of a new one added to the cost of this guitar still makes it an absolute bargain!

I have had my eye on a few other Harley Benton guitars and now I know that they really are this good, I will certainly be ordering some more pretty soon! What a great way to build a collection of entirely playable guitars of different flavours.

Unbeatable value for the money!

I have a few low/mid range instruments in my house but the quality of this TE-30 was a big big surprise. It looks, feels, sounds and plays just as good as my Squier or Ibanez guitars but for less money.

Look/finish

The first time I saw this guitar in real life I was amazed by the look of it. Every pieces and parts of this beauty look and feel nice and high quality. The finish itself has a weird plastic look, though. Still, it looks better than on the pictures. The pickguard also looks good but I would prefer a black one on this light coloured guitar.

The tuners are surprisingly high quality.

Playability/Setup

The guitar was set up really nicely out of the box. The truss rod was set up perfectly, the intonation was OK, the action was pretty good, however, I could lower the strings without getting any rattle. The guitar plays really well, it is one of my most comfortable guitars.

Sound

The sound is close to what you would expect from a tele style guitar. It certainly has that 'twang' vibe. The neck pickup by itself sounds a bit hollow for my ears. The bridge pickup tends to be too harsh but you can play nicely with the tone knob. The two puppies together sound beautifully. Overall, I'm happy with the pickups, they can give you a nice impression of a real tele. Also, being a single coil guitar, it is not noisy at all, I was surprised how high could I turn the gain on my amp without much annoying hum and buzz.

You can play very different styles of music with this beauty, it is very flexible.

To sum it up: I love my new TE-30, I can tell you it is my no. 1 guitar since I have it. I am amazed by its overall quality, and I would deifinitely recommend it!

How on earth is it this cheap?

I seriously can't believe the quality of this guitar at this price. There are a few niggles e.g. the wiring could be slightly better (occasionally it cuts out for a moment but then is fine) and the pickups aren't the absolute best but they're certainly good enough.

I've mainly just messed around with this at home but I have no doubt it could hold it's own at a gig, I would probably give the wiring a once over before doing that though.

I'm not a huge fan of the colour but I didn't buy it for the colour, I bought it for how it plays and sounds.

If this is your first electric guitar you're very lucky. My first electric guitar around 18 years ago cost about £40 more and was about 10 times worse than this in every way.

You won't find a better guitar for under £100 than this!

As with all my purchases, I invested time to read up on the pros and cons of this product. The guitar arrived safely and well packaged not to mention quickly too.

Now for the guitar itself, for the price you really can't be anything other than impressed. This played better than some £200+ guitars I've played in the shop right out of the box.

The guitar is pretty light which I find is rare in cheaper guitars, the neck is nice and very playable. What made this better was that the action was spot on right off the bat, can't ask for too much more than that really, especially when you consider the price point.

All in all I'm very happy I made this purchase, there's nothing I can complain about to be totally honest. I originally bought this as a project guitar but the finish is that good that I've convinced myself to leave it as it is, if that isn't testament to the work that's gone into this guitar I don't know what is!

I mean it even came with a lead, what more could you ask for. A very happy customer!

Awesome Guitar!

I purchased this guitar about 3 days ago and i love it!!!I've tested it with other guitars including the 7ender Standard Tele MIM,Squier Affinity Tele and higher priced Harley Benton Guitars but the TE-30 had the absolutely BEST sound!The Perfect choice for Clean Tones,Classic Rock and George Harrison stuff.You can also do nice Malcolm Young stuff and dirty Blues with this Guitar!It has such a nice twangy sound!Much character! :).I Use these Dunlop Billy Gibbons 008 Gauge strings.

Mine came with a FLAMED MAPLE Neck!DOPE!This is such an awesome guitar!

The neck is really nice shaped,it could be a bit thinner in my opinion,but the Playability is still really nice,especially for a 89 Euro guitar.

The string action was a little bit high when i first played it,but its not much work to change that :).The Tone and Volume controle works very smooth.

The Bridge ist ergonomic,perfect for Lead and Picking.

The only thing i don't like are the tuners.They don't keep the tuning very long,but they work realy smooth.I think i'll change them.

This guitar is great for modification!The 50s look is perfect for an Esquire Project :)

Maybe i'll build something like a Bigsby-Humbucker-Gretschy style tele out of it.

Buy this guitar if you want a Tele for under 500 Euros!

Total Suprise

I basically bought this to be a donor guitar (Ash Body for £64 = yes please). However, I've decided to keep it as it is, with the exception of up-graded pickups. Build quality is excellent. Plays nice. I find the standard pickups un-balanced but nothing a quick up-grade can't sort out.

Really nice for this price

Neck is thick shape like les paul or custom shop fenders, i love it.Pickups not bad,i will load twang king.But very suprising me for this price really cool.

Really good cheap guitar

Bought this as I have never tried a telecaster before. Was looking specifically for one with a maple fret board and this was by far the cheapest about.

The finish is really nice. High gloss, but you can see the grain through the finish (not just loaded with paint). No massive blemishes or rough spots except one slight chip on the neck joint. The neck is smooth and lacks the sticky lacquer you'd expect from a guitar this price.

The sound over all is good. The bridge pickup is very snappy and unsurprisingly suits chicken pickin' style stuff really well. Can get a bit screechy at high gain. The neck pick up is woolly. Works really well clean or with light gain, but can become too compressed at high gain. The middle position with a bit of light drive sounds amazing.

Seems to hold tune well so far, and the volume and tone knobs again manage to avoid the usually hassle of cheap guitars in that they only work at either full on or full off. Very impressive guitar for the money.

The neck is a bit of a baseball bat, which will suit some more than others, and may make it a tough guitar for beginners. The action on this particular guitar was quite high, but again thats a matter or personal preference.

Brilliant for the money, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap knock about guitar, or as a spare for a gigging tele.

harley benton telecaster

for the price is unbelievable and the sound is just great

An Excellent Take On A Classic

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 (also reviewed). 3 working days later they arrived.

On opening the box my first impressions were wow the TE-30 is beautiful, The body is made of 2 nicely figured pieces of ash that are center joined and stained a mid 50's vintage white which is flawless . This was areal surprise as I expected a multi piece body with possibly a veneer on the front.

The neck is nice piece of maple with a nice c section to it and nice a satin finish that feels nearly as good as my fender relic tele. The frets were a t little uneven so as it was going for a setup I decided to convert it to a esquire style tele.

The bridge plate felt a little cheap but the dimensions meant that I could swap it for a bridge I already had.(I change most of the hardware on my guitars). The tuners 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. I managed to make it sound even more mellow by rolling the tone off a little. The real joy is the bridge pickup, this little ceramic beauty so almost identical to the lap steel pickups that were used in early esquires and teles up to 1952 .

The guitar is now back from its setup and it's fantastic. The neck pick has been removed and a new pickguard mounted the wiring has also been changed over to the esquire wiring. This guitar rocks with the best of my collection.

Overall a fantastic guitar for the money and even better if you send a little money upgrading a couple of areas (though other than a fret level it doesn't need any real work).

Harley Benton TE-30 BE Standard Series

Normally a bass player, I was looking for something dirt cheap but that still looked good to play around on guitar-wise. The used market looked a little sparse, and anything for the same price as the TE-30 had very little going for it.

I was a little cynical about the potential quality of such a cheap Telecaster model, but, with it in my possession, I'm very impressed. The tonal range is a little lacking, but the build quality seems fine. The finish looks unique and nicely done and it sounds impressive for a cheap guitar.

At some point I may replace the pickups, I expect it'd create a rather nice, if inexpensive, telecaster copy.

Plays, Sounds and Looks Great

This guitar plays, sounds and looks great, with nice high gloss finish and great sounding pickups, not unlike "Wilkinson's" in tone. This guitar played fine right out of the box and took very little to set up to my taste.

It really is good looking, much better in the flesh that photos. I really like the blonde "shaker" style body colour and grain detail, topped off with a nice high gloss lacquer Finnish. The natural colour maple neck and fret board have nice, subtle grain effects, with a matt/satin finish that feels soooo silky smooth in the hands, and to crown that off, nice even frets, well dressed with no "razor blade" ends, like even some more expensive guitars can often have.

The factory set up, and particularly the intonation on this is guitar is excellent. With 4 perfect and 2 very close, it's better than normally possible with a three barrel tele bridge. amazing as normally you can only get 6 close or 3 perfect with 3 near.