Harley Benton SC-1000 SBK Progressive Line Reviews

Really good guitar

I enjoy playing on this guitar. It is well-made and sounds great for this amout of money. Also a big thanks to reactive shipping!

A beast of a guitar!

Well, this thing growls. It's a beautiful guitar with a nasty bite. I had a roommate with a 90's Gibson Les Paul that costed her almost ten times as much as this HB guitar, and she preferred to play this one.

But it needed a bit of a set-up and it had some wiring issues.

I love it

As a newbie metal guitarist this instrument is all I could ask for, at an amazing price. The active pup's sound incredible distorted and the cleans are beautiful. The playability is great and the set-up out of the box was really good. I highly recommend it.

Excellent Quality

Great guitar for the price, tuners are toyish, but expected as I purchased the guitar, knowing i would have to replace them, nut will also go for a bone one. The rest, excellent, finish is flawless, playability is there, only minor setup needed to play out of the box.

Amazing

worth every penny. The quality right off the bat is very good. The playability is amazing.

Since I jump between metal, rock and jazz. This is kind of not made to be too subtle, but every tone is achievable

Incredibe!

For this money this guitar is exelent! It is really beautfull! frets, neck are cool! Only minus is pickups they are not nice. Anyway im gonna replace em.

Great bang for the buck

Great guitar, fit and finish are comparable to guitars 3x the price. I would recommend this guitar to anyone looking for something with active pickups at an affordable price.

My new favourite toy!

Just like everyone else, I was initially quite shocked by the way it looks, it is definitely a beauty. Quality-wise, mine doesn't seem to have any issues at all: the neck, frets, and strings are all properly adjusted and aligned, and look fantastic for the price. The guitar came pre-tuned, which was a bonus, but the tuners would be a negative if I had to pick one. Oh, and the weight is on the heavier side, but I already knew that before buying.

The sound is really good for a <200 EUR guitar, the active pickups, though not amazing, do indeed contribute to a high-gain, high-sustain metal-esque style. Contrary to other reviews, I enjoy the clean sound as well. I would have loved a bit more variety by way of the tone knob, but again, at this price point, it's acceptable.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with the guitar and immensely enjoy playing it/learning on it. Highly recommended if metal is your thing and you're looking for something around the 200 EUR mark!

Unbelieveable

I wanted an affordable single cut guitar for metal music, and I've always loved the look of the higher-end ESP Eclipses, so this looked like a good alternative. I hesitated a while because of the incredibly low price but there were so many good reviews that I decided to give it a chance.

When I got the guitar in the mail I was blown away, I could find no flaw in the build quality and the guitar was perfectly set up. The frets were perfectly level, intonation was on point, and the tuners keep the tuning really well.

I plugged the guitar into my Peavey Envoy 110 and was pleasantly surprised by the pickups, which provided more than enough punch for any songs I wanted to play. They obviously won't blow an EMG 81/85 set out of the water, but the difference was surprisingly minor. The clean tone of the guitar was quite good as well.

There were two cons I noticed with the guitar:

- The pickups are very noisy, at least with my amp, so you might want a noise gate with this.

- The frets were not smooth at all, which made bends uncomfortable, but that was easily fixable.

Overall, I'm very happy with the guitar and would recommend it to anyone looking for an affordable guitar with excellent quality. This guitar can easily compete with other guitars I've played, many of which are 2-3 times the price.

Great guitar with active pickups for the money

Been using this guitar for 6 months. It looks great, plays well. But on highgain it produces static noise which can be fixed by noise gate. Tuners are okay but could be better something like grovers on sc custom

good for the price and an amazing modding platform

so for this price your getting a satin black single cut style guitar with gold hardware, the tuners hold tuning very well, the neck is really comfortable to play and its not very thick, the freats are good i just needed to polish them a bit and now its almost perfect, the pickups are fine maybe a bit too noisy but if you play rock/metal they are fine

Good guitar for metal

Pros: good looking guitar, good metal sound

Cons: dificulties with clean sound

Excellent for first guitar with active pickups

I've been trying to get into guitars with active pickups, and recently I've decided to order this one. The guitar came shortly after neatly packed and there were no noticeable damages on the guitar.

After playing the guitar for a while I'm overall impressed by the sound this guitar have. It's my first guitar with active pickups, but the sound is really hot and heavy, exactly what I hoped for. So far, I haven't yet seen any damages on the frets and there were no dead tones anywhere on the guitar.

Only problem that I have noticed is that when I turn my tone knob all the way, there is some noise coming out when I play. Not sure why is that though.

Pros:

- Hot and heavy sound

- Nice wielding, easy to bend and hammer on

- Very nice looking

Cons:

- Overall it's very nice looking, but the knobs don't match the overall style of the guitar

- Noisy when the tune knob is turned to the max

Overall, for the first active pickup guitar, I'm really glad I ordered it.

SC-1000

Could not be happier, I was trying to get an Epiphone les paul custom prophesy EX which I sold a while back and really missed it but decided at the price to take a chance on the sc-1000.

I am glad I decided to give the Harley Benton a go as having both the Epiphone and Harley I can't tell the difference.

Out the box its setup is nice and everything is as it should be , im a real fan of the pickups to. I had aimed to get an ESP EC-1000 but doubt ill bother now I can't see where the extra $1200 would go to get the ESP . I really was not expecting this guitar to be in any way good at the price I paid but I was way wrong. Big fan of this sc-1000, I think other brands should worry about how good the Harley Benton is.

Amazing Shredder

This guitar was awesome out of the box, and after some polish and new strings, this thing screams.

Brilliant unit.

replaces my stratocaster as preferred stage use.

great action ,tone control and balance

A really nice active guitar

In the end i decided the actives were not for me and sold this but thats not saying anything bad about the guitar.

Everything feels solid i changed the tuners and bridge on mine before i even started but not sure i needed to really

With the extra money spent on a new bridge tail piece and tuners it gives a really nice quality feel well playing guitar the pickups are as nice as any other active .. but they were not for me

Progressive thinking

WOW, what a beauty. I just love the Matte/satin finish of this guitar, offset by the gold hardware. Even the p/up covers are matte black. The p/ups are Active and will not work without the 9 volt battery, but when fired up they produce some wonderful tone. Crystal clear Hi's and full bodied Lows, and everything in between. The Mahogany neck (which has an original L.P heel joint) sits nicely in the palm of my hand, and is slick and sturdy, the Headstock has a nice individuality about it, with lovely cream binding. The Blackwood fretboard (which looks like Ebony), has 24 frets and some very nice Flag inlays. The Tuners maintain the tuning well, and are finished in Gold. There is a Master Tone and two volume controls, which allows for perfect "blending" of the two pickups. In action this guitar feels very comfortable, thanks to the "body cut-away", and is surprisingly light ,for Mahogany. The neck is fast, with easy access to all 24 frets, the p/ups are excellent....This guitar is to be recommended. A Great performer at a delightful price...Something which puzzles me is, why it is called an SC-1000, when it has L-1000 marked at the 12th fret ?

Good for starters

After a year+ of using it, the knobs have gone out of place and I had to fix it. Not a big problem, but it made it a hassle to use it and it still feels like it could go out anytime.

I do like the sound and have not changed the pickups, the originals sound good!

Great guitar for a starter and looks stunning.

Harley Benton SC-1000 Progressive Line

This is very good guitar for the price. It comes with full mahagony wood, with very decent workmanship. Hardware on this guitars is not so good, but what are you want for this money? Buy this guitar, change hardware and you will have an excelent guitar.