Harley Benton SC-1000 SBK Progressive Line 4-stars Reviews

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.

Beautiful looking and sounding guitar but with issues

I have been somewhat of a Harley Benton connoisseur for the last 3 years or so. Decided to try one out on a whim and ended up being blown away. For the price, the quality is un-rivaled! Not to mention, these guitars play and sound amazing! So I have been purchasing HBs fairly regularly for a while now and they're always perfect! ..... until I bought this one.

Upon receiving the guitar I was pleasantly surprised as always with the look and feel of the guitar. All HBs I have bought in the past came immaculately set up and I thought this one would be no different. However the moment I began to play it, I noticed a fairly disappointing issue.

At least 4 of the frets were set WAY too high even to the point that playing in these frets went beyond buzzing and ended with a completely deadened note entirely. No amount of truss rod adjusting/bridge adjusting was going to fix this. Now I was left with the choice of sending it back for a replacement or taking care of the issue myself. Unfortunately I had gotten ahead of myself (based on previous HB purchases) and had gotten rid of all boxes/packaging etc, so decided to sort it myself.

After a tedious fret leveling/re-rounding session the guitar was finally playable. I done my intonation/action set up and this is where the guitar began to shine! All inconvenience aside, this guitar is an absolute beast! It plays like butter and is surprisingly light for an LP model. The HBZ active pickups pack a serious punch too! They are incredibly hot and responsive pickups without generating much, if any feedback! I was definitely starting to feel better about this purchase.

The guitar has many tones available due to the very responsive tone knob and handles a diverse range of genres beautifully. I have used the guitar for heavy metal to punk to pop to country etc, and all sound amazing. The feel of this guitar is that of a guitar 5 times it's price too. Very comfortable.

The hardware is actually very high quality, with a very stable and sturdy bridge and tailpiece. The machine heads are also excellent and hold tune very well and for a good long while, even under strenuous playing.

All in all, this guitar has become one of my favorites, even after the fret issues at the beginning. Also, I must say that this has not put me off buying Harley Bentons in the future and it shouldn't put you off either. I have written this disappointment off as a one-off rare occurrence based on the fact that I have purchased 6 HBs so far and 5 have been immaculate upon arrival! Still got a lot of love for the HBs! All in all, I highly recommend this guitar, but just make sure you thoroughly test it and make sure you are happy with everything before you throw away the boxes!

Pretty nice for a starter!

Great guitar to start shreddin'!!

I bought this badboy to get me started with metal, and, well, it does it perfectly! For the price you just can't go wrong. Good sustain, nice playability, well built overall. Some faults in the finish but nothing major. Only one "bad point" : the pickups tend to hiss a lot when pushed to their limit.

You can't go wrong with this guitar!

HB SC1000

Brilliant guitar was amazed .

pickups are great over all 100%

Very Nice Sound

As always, arrived quickly and well packaged. Set-Up pretty good out of the box, just a bit of tuning. Looks really nice but somehow looks a little basic compared to my other guitars but they mainly have more vintage looks. The matt black finish is very good but is a fingerprint magnet. Came with a 9v battery which was good. The real question is what does it sound like? I bought this as I need a heavier sounding guitar for recording, does it do the trick? ....Yep :) Those active pickups really sing and the sustain is unbelievable. If you are looking for a cheap guitar for learning metal or need to add one to your collection for those darker harder tones, go buy it.

Edit: A great guitar but never got to grips with its constant heavy tones. If you're looking for a guitar with a range of sounds and tones, this isn't the one for you. This is just full on noise, distortion, chug and sustain all the time if you run it through any gain, without gain its quite ordinary and lifeless.

Nice looking guitar

My friend ordered this guitar as a beginner guitar but it could be a perfect one for later too.

It looks really nice and the build quality is nice too.

For this price you cannot get better LP style guitar

( nice finishes, not bad electronics, playable neck).

It's hard to find a usable low price guitar for heavier music, but it's a great choice for that.

A very nice guitar at a budget price

This one is really nice. The matt black finish just adds to the looks and the active pickups deliver a very competent sound.

As the owner of several real Gibson Les Pauls, the shape appealed to me instantly and the two octave neck is a welcome addition.

The hardware is more than adequate and this guitar was very playable out of the box. I was able to drop the action considerably with no buzzing and found myself playing it a lot where I expected to use it just on the odd occasion.

It has a unique sound and feel all of its own, and is very nice to play, which is all you can ask from an instrument.

For this kind of price, you would expect a lot less than you get, but this is good wood with good hardware and punches well above its weight.

No regrets buying this one !

Harley Benton SC-1000 VB Progressive Line

got this guitar over a year ago, out of the box the quality & finish looked top notch, playability & sound excellent. Almost 2 years later everything still remains top quality, the finish remains as new, as dose the pickups and kit & no fretboard problems. standard clean and maintenance is all it has required. all in all this guitar punches far above it's price range.

My new favorite guitar

I bought this as my "Drop D" guitar and to cover Lamb of God songs and other bands I don't usually play with my "main" guitars.

It's my first guitar with active pickups, and also the cheapest guitar I've ever bought... so despite the glowing reviews it already has, I wasn't sure what to expect (I bought a Harley Benton bass many years ago and it was quite bad...).

Well I'm very impressed... despite a few cons listed below, this guitar is amazing, not just for the price I paid, but amazing in general! It looks great, it plays great and it even sounds great! I wish there were other colors so I could buy more of it (maybe a translucent black one, or glossy black... not interested in the white version).

Pros :

- Great pickups. So much better than the messy pickups in my Ibanez RG421. Aggressive, punchy, but detailed.

- Great action, neck and factory setup : of all my guitars, this is the easiest to play and it "feels" the most expensive.

- Looks great, but... (see cons)

Cons :

- Tuners are terrible and need to be replaced. You have to retune it every single time you pick it up.... and it's very hard to tune it right. They are the most imprecise I've ever seen. A joke !

- Inlays are made of cheap non-reflective plastic... It's a real shame because it's the only thing on the guitar that very clearly looks "cheap"... and it's also very noticeable even if you don't know much about guitars.

- The nut isn't glued properly on my guitar! It's not centered on the neck and sticks out slightly on one side. I will replace it with a bone nut.

- it's heavy and most of the weight is on the bottom of the body, with a tiny little arm in the front it's very hard to keep it balanced if you play sited.

Despite the cons it's possibly the greatest sounding guitar I own (my others are an Ibanez RG421-WK and a Schecter Damien 7). I love this guitar!

Great guitar for the money

This is a lot of guitar for the money, and for that alone you can't go far wrong.

The first thing that surprised me was the weight of the guitar. It's certainly no featherweight, so I'd recommend purchasing a decent strap with it.

Construction is good and it certainly feels well built (although my guitar did have a small chip from the headstock).

The active pickups sound great and give a very pleasing tone. It sounds fantastic with plenty of distortion, giving a very clear and controlled crunch, but is equally suited to clean jazzy tones.

Harley Benton impressed me with this guitar and I can definitely see myself ordering another HB in the future.

The definition for "Bang for the buck!"

I was just a few weeks away from a show and needed a backup guitar desperately. Money was a bit tight but couldn't afford going to another show and risking breaking another string. (My main axe has a floyd rose, so you know how much it time is wasted changing a string on stage!) So I found this guitar and thought to myself, "how bad could it be"?

So I ordered the guitar, and after a few hours of jamming with it I ended up confirming this was some of the best €166 ever spent on an instrument. I ended up playing the show with this guitar (as opposed to leaving it for backup), and held up just fine! Very pleased with the guitar and would personally suggest it to anyone who needs a backup guitar or who is yet starting out!