Harley Benton ST-20 WH Standard Series Reviews

I'm a complete noob, but I like to learn

I have never played guitar, but I decided to give it a try. I had a very limited budget, but I wanted to play it, so I got this beauty.

I like it so much, first of all - appearance, second of all - sound. I'm using Guitar Rig 5 and just having fun while I'm playing it, but the guitar picks up radio frequencies on bridge, middle, and neck, because of bad wiring and I need to fix it. In my opinion the guitar a bit heavy, but I'm a girl, so don't pay much attention to this factor. Guitar tuning was good initially and I really like to hold it in my hands. If you are a complete noob and wanna learn guitar, I would recommend this to you, but if you have an opportunity to play it before buy, try it.

Cannot believe this guitar is well under $100.00

I purchased this guitar a while ago for well under $100.00. I own many strat style guitars and built a few myself and this guitar is incredible for the price. First, If you are a beginner this guitar is PERFECT. If you are a seasoned player all you have to do is exchange the pickups and you have an awesome strat style guitar. I put a set of new Tex Mex Fender pickups (which was not that expensive) and it keeps up with the more expensive guitars. Quality is incredible and for the price it's amazing!

Good value guitar

Good value for the budget price I bought it especially to get familiar with the setup of the guitar I really learn a lot on this guitar I would have not done the same adjustments on an expensive guitar.

Pro: well built and sound performance Cons budget materials and mechanics although expected from this price guitar.

HB - White - Decent Quality

Well, sound is good, but unexpectedly neck quality is really good. Well matte finish and fret ends are amazing. Keyboard material is not like we used to but you dont feel uncomfortable.

The annoying thing is, its not just white, its a bit cream-like color on the body.

Btw: Quick delivery to Turkey. Thnx

Brilliant both for the price, and in general.

I have bought from Harley Benton in the past, about 2 or so years ago I ordered a Mustang style guitar which I was not satisfied with whatsoever, I decided not to purchase any of their products anymore.

Then I they improved A LOT. I decided to give it a shot, and order this HB Strat, and god how great of a decision that was! It sounds great, it feels great (better than a MiM I've owned in the past) and looks great. The only problem was a loose pickup selector cap which is easily fixable. I recommend this guitar to anyone looking for a classic strat sound. Can't go wrong with this price either.

My first strat

This is my second guitar. The first one was a single cut style guitar from a higher price range, but I really wanted to try a classical strat without spending all of my savings. And I actually got what I expected!

The exact tone I wanted to hear from a stratocaster (I'm not an expert, but it sounds glassy enough to me). And what surprised me the most is that it's not noisy at all! I have a problem with receiving radio signal in my apartment, but I cannot hear it at all when two pickups are used. Even on the high gain! That's very impressive to me because my single cut receives radio even with its two humbuckers.

The only two things I didn't like is the color of the fretboard (it was too pink, not like on the pictures) and the smell, but the second problem solved itself over time.

great but...

feels great and sounds not bad, unfortunately, the one I received had dents on the guitar's body. Does not seem it was due to transportation as the box is not damaged. More like manufacturing defects.

Great for the money, it could use some upgrades like better tuners/saddle set, but overal it quite good

Harley Benton ST-20 WH Standard Series

Surprised at the quality of this guitar. Very good for the cost. Strings arent the best . Changed the strings and the guitar sounds and performs brilliant. Highly recommend if you dont have a lot to spend on a guitar

very good

There are two dents on the neck from the back! because of this set 4. otherwise everything is fine! fast delivery .

good

overall very impressed frets are good came set up well and with little editing (removing trem back plate/cover and the plastic shim under the neck plate I think it is a great guitar definitely worth £70

Better than expected!

I got this guitar just to have one to play as I'm currently living away from home and it definitely exceeded my expectations! It feels quite nice to play, I've actually paid more for guitars that have felt worse than this one. It also came set up quite well, with no fret buzz etc and a nice action.

It doesn't stay in tune terribly well but that's to be expected at this price point and it can be quite hard plugging the cable in and out of the input jack but other than that nothing stands out to me as being particularly bad.

This would be a great guitar for a beginner or for anyone wanting something cheap, maybe as a spare! I was pleasantly surprised at the quality!

Very nice guitar

Compare to price this is a very nice guitar with good sound quality. I love it! The body color is great. The tone is amazing. Finishing of this product is also great! Didn't expected this much considering the price. It is a very nice guitar.

It can be used for practicing, home recording and even if you want you can do some gigs with it too.

The body wood is great. Build quality is very good.

I highly recommend it.

At first I thought I had made a mistake...

I'm no luthier, but I am also no novice when it comes to assessing quality and setting up guitars. the first time I played this out of the box I thought I had wasted my money. I couldn't get the thing to stay in tune, the action was horrible, it was cutting my hands up and I was comtemplating sending it back.

Then I got drunk.

Then the fret file and screwdrivers came out. Here's how I turned this guitar from a potential error into my favourite guitar to play.

1: Take the strings off.

2: File the fret edges down to stop it from shredding your hands off.

3: Get some oil. I used fast fret. I went up and down the whole neck dabbing oil on. I also put plenty on the nut. This is important as it helps termendously with the tuning issues that came with using the trem. Then wipe off the excess.

3: I removed a spring from the trem. This made it float. If you dont want a floating trem then don't follow this step. If you want to be like Jeff Beck then absolutely do.

4: Put new strings on.

5: drunkenly send whatsapp messages to your brother and your guitarist friend declaring yourself to be some kind of guitar fixing god.

Seriously though, after I had done the above I was scarcely able to put it out of tune again even with diving the trem right to the body. The fretboard drank a fair bit of oil but looks and feels lovely now. I did have to file some of the frets down above the 12th as I was getting buzz when bending up but this was probably just luck of the draw and you may have 0 issues. A good guitar tech could have this thing playing beautifully for you with minimal effort if you dont fancy trying it yourself.

Soundwise it is beautiful. I can't hear much difference between this and a fender. The pickups are good, there's a lot of buzzing like you would expect from this configuration but I know this can also be remedied to a point with good shielding and some proper earthing.

If you want a good starter guitar, a project guitar or something to pad out your collection (I use this for recording) then I can't recommend this enough. Great guitar. Great price.

HARLEY ROCK

This Guitar did not have any issue to deal with .I plug it and I play it.

What a surprise!

I bought this guitar to have more set-up experience on different guitars but the second i started to play it i fell in love. This one is most definitely not going in the "mess up and repair" pile.

And for stuff that actualy relates to the guitar:

It is very nice and comfy to play.

The sound is surprisingly good.

Couldn't find any defects or flaws in the overall finishing.

The only thing i did change was the tuners because it wasn't 100% stable(could have been the strings but i just felt like changing it non the less).

So... I would recommend this guitar to anybody who never owned a st style guitar and just wants to check out if he/she is in to it. Or beginners looking to buy their first axe. Or just people who wants another guitar without having to justify it to the spouse :)

Cheers!!

Great starter guitar

Very good for a first guitar

Good Guitar on a budget

I purchased this guitar to act as an upgrade platform for my American Stratocaster, to act as a sounding board for upgrades. I figured for this price that there would be some work to do, but was hoping that it wouldn't be too bad. To make a long story short, I think the guitar met but did not greatly exceed my expectations.

Out of the box, the guitar was quite playable, but unexceptional.

The action wasn't the worst, but was too high for any ones style of playing. A truss rod adjustment helped, but only slightly. A number of frets were too high. I could hammer some of them down, but had to file 5 frets, two of them heavily, to get the frets flat. The truss rod was set up a little weird, the bend created by relief was too high on the neck, so I couldn't get the action as low as I wanted (I like very low action), but at least it was much better and definitely playable.

Tuning stability was kinda meh. I've seen worse, but it wouldn't hold tune for extended periods. Replaced the tuners with Fender American standard tunes and it now has great tuning stability. I also replaced the nut with a graph tech nut, mostly because I it was on a guitar I was selling, so I figured what the heck. The tuning stability using the trem isn't great, but I figure if I put on a heavier trem block and possibly new bridge saddles, then it might be able to hold tune with heavy trem use.

The stock pickups were okay. Not great, but not terrible either, and definitely a surprise in a guitar at this price point(in a good way). I put GFS single coils in it to see if that would help the sound, and it definitely did. I measured the resistance of the stock pickups (ceramics btw), they all measured in at around 4.5k ohms, so I am guessing they all came out of the same bushel basket. The pickups I originally installed were a Texas Special set I had lying around, and although I liked the neck and middle, I just couldn't live with the bridge. Strong for a single coil, but too harsh and trebley. I opted to go HSS with over-wound GFS singles and a Dimarzio 36th Anniversary PAF in the Bridge. Really liking this configuration. The problem I had with it, was the screw holes didn't line out with a standard strat HSS pick-guard. I managed to get 5 screws to line up. I haven't decided if I want to drill new holes or not. The routing is actually set up for HSH, very neatly done too, another surprise. I have worked on numerous Squires, and the routing on this guitar was much better than most of those.

The paint looks good, but is on the thin side, not as heavily painted as Squires. But it is very evenly applied and overall looks like some attention was paid to it.

Roseacer. I havn't decided if I like this or not yet. I did clean the fretboard when I replaced the factory strings (mandatory of course) and it was very dirty (common with new budget guitars). At first it felt kinda chalk-boardy and perhaps a little fake. But the more I play it, the more I kinda like it. Categorizing it is the hardest part. It is not like ebony, rosewood, or maple. It is really its own thing. The neck is kinda a medium width C shape, I would say somewhere in the middle between slim and chunky.

My overall impression of this guitar is that it is a good out of the box guitar, with some good but limited upgrade potential. I keep up on the Squires they are making nowadays, and would have to say that overall this is a bit better than a Bullet Squire, and would compete nicely with Affinity Squire in regards to sound and play-ability. However I would give the Affinity the nod in regards to overall finish work. those guitars have a thicker, higher quality finish to them. I always thought they were designed to look good first, and play/sound good second. This guitar seems to be designed the other way around.

Well..

It's a 80 euro guitar. You can't expect the quality delivered from a $300 Fender Strat. But it works, the strings that it come with aren't good at all so i recommend you change them the second you get them. It also needs a full setup, various frets are buzzy. I find even fretting that the strings can be off key or sharp, even when the string is perfectly tuned. Don't get this guitar if you are going to be learning electric guitar seriously, only if you are using it for a small hobby, or (like me) just getting it for playing small things for music production, where you can alter the signal.

A Nice Starting Strat Guitar

Bought this a year ago and i still love it has not given me any problems yet strings are easy to change and the tremelo works fine. The neck work is average not good not bad what for someone that is begining doesnt really matter to be honest. The interior is kinda rought what is to expect for a cheap guitar like this, well you cant see it normaly only if you open it but it could been done better.

Overall is a pretty nice guitar for what is costs it has a nice finish and it sounds pretty well so if you wanna buy a simple starter strat guitar go for this one or one of the same with a different colour :D