Harley Benton R-457MN WH Progressive Series Reviews

Sexy beast

As this is in white, u would expect some angel singing.

Heck no!

This is a beast!

only issue i have is the fret wires arent as smooth.

Awesome guitar for this price

I just got my Harley Benton today and i must say i was expecting much worse quality guitar for this price range.

there are two downsides. the pickups are gives you very low output for a metal player. If you're not into metal you're ok but i think i'll change the pickups with a mid-range pickup.

the other downside is the steel frets. they need to be sanded from the surface. you can hear the scratching sounds when you bend strings but the scratching sounds will be gone with a 1-2 hours of work.

i'm very happy with my purchase. i'll definitely go for second harley benton.

Real Nice

I ordered this guitar for my 13 year old grandson, it is his second Harley Benton guitar (he owns 13 different guitars). He wanted a 7 string guitar and this one fits the bill. He is thrilled with the style, looks, and the sound. No cons so far to mention.

Great bang for your buck

I've been playing guitar on and off for 25+ years and was wondering if a 7 string would be my kind of thing. This is the perfect instrument to try it out, at an affordable price with decent enough quality. Of course you can expect some problems at this price point, but I was surprised by how minor and manageable they are.

I only found one chip in the finish on the back, which is negligible. One ferule was protruding a bit, which needed a couple of taps to be put back in place. The strings it came with were too light, but I ordered some power slinkies with it anyway. And the frets were a bit dull, some even a bit corroded. All of these things are minor issues and easily fixed with a bit of TLC.

I discovered the worst problem however while polishing the frets: a sub-standard fret job. Some frets were leveled, but not crowned, giving a flat, unpolished surface. This even resulted in one dead spot on the 7th string at the 12th fret, which couldn't be polished or intonated. This will require a leveling and crowning job in the future, so it's not a quick fix. However this is not a deal breaker, the guitar is still very usable and payable.

Overall these sort of problems are to be expected at this price and I am still amazed at the value for money. With a little effort this quickly transforms from a decent enough to a good instruments. This guitar makes me wish entry-level instruments had this kind of quality back in the 90's.

Decent 7 string

I wanted to buy a new guitar to really experiment on so I decided to buy a 7 string. I didn't want to spend that much money so i bought this one and let me tell you it actually is much better than i thought it'd be. The overall look and feeling is nice. The neck was smooth and the fret ends weren't sharp at all. I had to adjust the action a little but now it play perfectly. The only small problem are the pickups. They are quite muddy sounding but I could easily change them out. Overall the build and finish quality was nice apart from a couple small dents in the belly cut that were then finished over but that doesnt bother me at all. Overall a pretty decent guitar for the money

from okay to really good

When I received this guitar, it was good. It played a little bit stiff. The frets were a bit rough. Making scraping sounds while bending. Then I decided to polish the frets with OOOO-grade steel wool and I lowered the the action by turning all of the bridge saddle screws a full 360 degrees. This made an awesome improvement. Plays very smooth now. No fret buzz - maybe I can lower the action even further :)

The fretboard is very flat ; very large radius. When I pick up this guitar after playing my strat or my tele it even feels as if it's hollow :)

The finish is flawless. Great guitar for very little money. The white color looks great in combination with the maple fretboard. Even my wife and my daughters agree with that :)

Disappointed after hearing about HB

I'll keep this as short as I can. I have heard many great things about Harley Benton all around the guitar community. I live in Canada, so I can't just go to the store and try them, but I was willing to give them a shot. I am disappointed that I did.

The guitar came with a dented headstock from poor packaging at the ends. This was hardly the start of the issues. Second thing I noticed was a thumb sized blotch of paint on the lower horn. It's like the spray gun was held on that spot for too long. Whatever, it is a cheap guitar. I can deal with finish imperfections.

The next issue was the fretboard. The fret ends are very sharp, but not only that, there is a ton of chipping on the higher frets, and just looks and feels rough and sloppy.

The neck profile is nice, but the finish on the back of the neck is coarse and not smooth at all! It feels like 300grit sandpaper!

The lower b string will not intonate at all. Even with the bridge at the max adjustment point (with the spring removed even), it is still sharp. The other string intonated fine.

The tuners are not good either, but I expected to change those.

Pickups are meh.

All in all, I don't recommend it. You'll spend twice the guitars cost to make it playable and you may as well have bought a better guitar by that point.

Great entry level 7 string

I'll try and keep this simple.

I am not the greatest player in the world, I've struggled my entire playing life to progress and to "get good" which has only been made worse due to a fairly serious hand injury a few years ago. Along the way I've become partial to the "Ibanez Prestige" guitars the neck profile works well with my busted up hands and the build quality keeps my inner gear nerd happy.

When I first started looking for a 7 string I could not find anything local that I liked for under $1000 CAD which was far more then I wanted to spend on something I was not sure that I would like. After reading some reviews I decided to Order this Harley Benton unit.

I had mixed feeling when I opened up the box..

The good:

*Good quality hardware

*The electronics are nice quality and work well.

*Almost perfect set up

*Fantastic finish

*great neck profile

*Really light weight, this may be a double edged sword (see negatives)

The bad:

*Mine came with three good sized dents on the body despite there being no damage to the packaging. i suspect the body wood is soft

*The pickups are muddy down low and lack definition

Overall I am super happy with my guitar, I would say it is as good as the competitions guitars at twice the price.

Very Good for the price

First venture into 7 string territory and didn't want to spend much. Here's my opinion of the R-457MN WH.

Pickups - not great but passable, and they are either on or off, a small turn of the the volume control and its on full blast, but for the price cant complain and this is the type of guitar that needs to be full on all the time.

Neck - unfinished, Ibanezesque, the fret ends are sharp and need to be sanded/filed down and polished, the neck is relatively straight, an hours work would get a good setup. Its not so wide that its uncomfortable for a 6 string player and access up to 24th fret ok.

Tuners - not very accurate, but my strings are staying in tune ok.

Bridge : had to lower the saddles to bring the string height down. standard block no real issues.

The overall guitar is very light and sits well, the neck is not heavy so it doesn't tip over when standing up.

For the price, this is a very good guitar, with some work it can be better. I'd say it's comparable with the Ibanez GIO but at half the price, this is very good value for money.