Harley Benton MS-60 VW Vintage Series 4-stars Reviews

Great little guitar

This is a great project guitar. Finish and build is very good. The hardware is good and even the pickups sound good. I recommend this for anyone as a great value.

I took this guitar and replaced the vibrato (Fender American standard vibrato), pickups (with Seymore Duncan affinity). The guitar now sounds and plays awesome now.

great mustang shape guitar

this is very cool small guitar, i love it

Cons: noisy pickups but interesting sound, loose tuners, trouble with is the E, at unboxing E blown away

Pros: great shape, frets were leveled nice, no buzzing, nice ergonomic, nice tremolo

Good but needed a complete setup

This was my first Harley Benton and i was very dissapointed with the setup, there was major fret buzz nearly everywhere on the frets. It took me about 3 hours to set it up correctly so their QC really needs to be checked. Tuners are decent but they do need replacing as they kept slipping even after 4 days of use.

Anyway enough of the bad here is the good sort of.

Once it was setup it is a great guitar for the money. It really looks vintage too with the ivory colour. The sound has a 70's vibe to it which i love. It feels very easy to play not the best but good.

Overall a great value guitar. All though you need to spend a bit more getting a decent setup and better tuners. but for the price it can't be beat. I will be buying another HB for sure.

For the Price!

It's not a high quality instrument but it will easily rival other instruments of its type that are 3x the price. If you've already got a "main" guitar but want a mustang type guitar to add that sound to your tool kit, this is an excellent option, can't be beaten on bang for buck! It's especially a good buy if you like modding instruments.

It could do with:

better tuners

better nut

the Whammy bar is too long and using it and strumming/picking at the same time, comfortably, means you're strumming/picking almost at the 15th fret.

rolled finger board

The bridge is a bit "sticky" when you're using the whammy bar, not the smoothest movement, easy fix tho without replacing the bridge.

What it probably doesn't need:

Frets are pretty well done

The pickups are great! genuine mustang sound. well matched, lots of detail in the sound.

Harley Benton MS-60

The guitar arrived from Germany in 9-10 days. The ONLY reason I didn't give this guitar a full Five Star Review is because the Tremelo arm falls out easily. It's a push in type, so I have to push hard to keep it in. Other than that, Fit, Finish, Sound, and Playability are ALL Top shelf. Just a slight truss rod and height adjustment to the bridge was all that was necessary to get it to play like a Champ, which is great considering how many different zones it traveled through to get here. After letting it settle in for a few days I made minor adjustments to the intonation. It's a superb Instrument

It's a good beginner guitar. I heavily modded it for my taste and I like how it sounds now. I got rid of the two single coils and added a Lindy Fralin noisless P90 pickup. The neck is short 610mm, that makes it easy to play, but it's not the best choice for downtuning. The tuners stay in tune and the bridge is ok, but the body is pretty heavy.

Nice, but needed a little work..

I bought this guitar in order to get some 'tones; that I didn't have with any of my other guitars, it certainly does the job and allows me to get that twangy sound followed by a great tremolo system, the big issue here was the feedback due to the earthing problem, so I gave it to my guitar guy who managed to isolate the earthing and rewired it and now its just as I would want it, quiet and hum free....you have to consider what you pay for these little Gems, and a few pounds (£30 ) to be honest is not a big price to pay to iron out a few issues....lovely little guitar that works well for the propose.....

MS-60 Rules

Ok so...I decided to de-mistify the idea of buying cheap guitars gets you cheap results. I bought the MS-60 and got way more than what I expected. The guitar is nicely finished, it sounds good, it was very well intonated out of the box and is very fun to play. I recommend this guitar to anyone from beginners to experience musicians that need a gigging guitar that gets the job done and takes the punishment.

P.S. I was really impressed with the sound of the Wilkinson pickups.

Good value for your money but you will need to give it some love and care - once you do, it's a guitar that's worth 5 times the

So - the guitar rings quite well straight out of the box. Surprisingly resonant even without being plugged into an amp.

I like the sound of the guitar, it feels like a good middle ground between P90 and tele-single coils.

The neck was not glossy and has a minimal finish, probably one coat, which is quite nice. No grating fret ends. Some residue from the factory inside the truss rod entry - which you can clean. Rosacere is quite hard but I could still move quite fast on the neck.

This is my first shortscale and i'm astonished that I've never tried it before - it feels great.

You will want to give this guitar a good set up and some love:

Mine had a loose input jack - which I had to tighten. This happens with a lot of guitars, even when you buy it straight from a store.

I had to tighten one tuner which was not screwed all the way.

Some of the higher frets are quite un-even, depending on your desired action you might need to sand the frets down a bit. I would also recommend rounding them - as they come quite stiff.

The neck needed tiny adjusting - almost negligent, as the fret leveling was the main "issue".

Bridge, as we all know we cannot adjust the height of the saddles on this bridge - so you might need to file the metal to get the proper radius on the bridge.

Overall: good value for your money, and excellent value is you can prep the guitar.

Excellent value starter guitar

Pros

- Holds tuning surprisingly well - bridge system is decent enough out the box

- Nice shape, colour and pickguard

- Excellent price

- Pick ups have plenty of life and response

Cons

- Finish is not perfect in places

- Nut seems quite low quality

- Fretboard was very dry - sorted out with some lemon oil though

- Came with 9s which are way too spongy - stick a set of 10s on after oiling!

Overall

Great value for money. A much better option than a basic squier for someone starting out.

Not bad.

For the price it is very good. I got this guitar for alternative rock and grunge. Being comparable to a Mustang.

Pros-

Easy to play

Exactly what it is. A mustang.

22 frets.

Shorter distance between frets.

Cons-

1 major con, Buzz. From the bridge.

Sound is a little dry in tone.

If you have the money and you like playing alt or grunge this guitar is a perfect spare guitar.

Very good value

Very Impressive for money, well built very good tremolo system.

Would recommend.

Pretty good buy!

This was an instant buy for me, being a massive fan of the look of the mustang style and with a price tag like this i went for it. When it arrived i was quite impressed with the weight, quality and general feel of the guitar, however the pickups aren't quite what i'd want for this guitar as they don't thicken up under any amp setting. Though a change of bridge, heavier strings and strong set of pups with decent low end response and this is a good as any squier mustang for considerably less. One thing to be said is that the switches in this bad boy are probably the only weak point as they feel cheap but it'd not a big deal they've consistently worked for me. Basically if this is a first/practice/project guitar it's a brilliant deal, just don't expect it to play and sound like a mustang out the box.

surprising quality

I'd read some chat on the internet about the surprising quality of these Harley Benton guitars, and was after something Fenderish with a shortscale neck. Bought this, it arrived yesterday, and I'm pleased to say that all the reviews/message boards I'd read were right - it is a very good guitar for the price. Very solid feeling. There are a few aesthetic things - some slightly messy trimming on the scratchplate, a loose screw on one of the switches - but these are small issues. At least as nice as Squiers that cost x2 if not more. Will be buying Harley Benton again.