Harley Benton R-458 BK Progressiv Series Reviews

Perfect "My First 8 String"

Bought mainly just to test the waters in the eight string world, and it's paid off. It's a beautiful bit of kit for the price. Needs a bit of setting up and TLC when you get it, but definitely worth the time!

I wanted a 8-string - I've got an 8-string

Well this guitar is pretty cheap, but for these money you get pretty much. Everything is satisfying. Only thing is that picks' change is vital. New picks will make the guitar just perfect for these money. I guess I've fell in love with it. Hope, my wife won't deport me and my guitars to live in the streets...

I've been using this guitar for quite a while now and it's a great one for the value you pay. I replaced the pickups with dimarzio ionizers because the original were crap, now i have a lot of fun with it, i'm even recording songs of my album with it.

Finish is great, and the neck is straight. Needed a setup to be able to set the action to my liking. The body is actually very resonant acoustically.

Never seen a guitar of this price range holding the tuning so well.

But be carefull switching the pickups and expect to fill the pickup holes with something like pickup rings if you buy passive, the cavities are bigger than normal, probably the size of active pickups like EMG or SD-

If you want to check how it sounds check my instagram i have several videos there, give me a shootout if you came from here! :)

https://www.instagram.com/ruisantosmusic/

For this price, perfect.

Straight out the box it was in great condition and worked perfectly.

The only negatives would be that the switch feels cheap (but works perfectly.) Secondly, the neck pickup is very wooly and lacks definition. Any sort of distortion demanded the bridge pickup... but at this price I'm really splitting hairs.

Solid guitar that won't bust your wallet

After getting into more 7 and 8-string guitar music, I decided that I wanted to get my own to try to play and write in heavier styles. Obviously I didn't want to spend too much just to find out it wasn't for me, so this was the perfect option.

The neck is surprisingly comfortable, and the action is great. Obviously the pickups aren't going to melt your face off, but sound decent enough to write and play with. I may end up switching them out eventually, I like the guitar so much.

There's nothing that really feels cheap or tacky about the build; it's solid and reliable. I see a lot of criticism saying the build feels cheap, but honestly, I really like it, and for the money, it's an excellent purchase.

Great guitar for the money

The guitar play well straight from the box. It has a nice quality feel and great playability. The pick ups lack a little power but I can't complain considering the price. Excellent entry guitar for any one wanting to try an 8 string.

Nice guitar

I've been playing guitar for a long time, and I was curious to try those 8 string guitars that are rising up now in the market. My problem, as many other people, the budget. I was not in position to buy a 900$ guitar now, so I told myself that this budget 8 string could satisfy my curiosity, and if it failed as a guitar, the economical loss won't be as much. But it paid off:

Pros:

-Good construction and finish, it feels a bit light but not an issue.

-Good tuners.

-Good electronics. For the sound gourmets maybe these pickups are not of their taste, but they do a pretty good job IMHO. A little too hot I must say, but that's not an issue for me.

-It doesn't feel as alien when coming from a 6 string. This is because of its neck length and width. It feels very comfortable.

-Well intonated and decent string action (for my taste anyway)

Cons:

-The nut is made of cheap plastic, I strongly recommend to change it. Also it's set up sort of too high, when you voice a chord in the 0-3 frets and you apply a little bit more pressure, the chord detunes a lot.

- The strings are too light for what the instrument is (the F# one, so the 8th, felt like I was holding a bow instead of a guitar...). Change the set and get harder strings (like a .10 or plus).

-It depends on the unit, but for mine I will need to do a fret job. Some frets buzz where others don't (not a truss rod issue, that's tested already)

-Packaging. Just covered in carton board and air bags to secure the instrument, mine came with a hit in the head, half the size of a pinky's nail. Not something that is very bad but I could've been less lucky.

-The jack plug is not well grounded/connected, I get a familiar not-good-grounded noise (like when you touch the tip of a connected jack) when I move the jack in a particular position . I haven't opened the guitar but it seems like a quick fix.

So there you have it, as it is a budget instrument you'll need to adjust it, but for what it does and what it costs it is very good.

Perfect introduction to 8 strings

I bought this guitar after playing one at a friends house. I was suprised by how comfortable it was to play, after a few moments the thin but sturdy neck really welcomes your fretting hand. The neck is well finished and the frets are perfectly fitted with no sharp edges often found on cheaper guitars.

The build quality of this is really something special considering how cheap it is. The machine heads could do with being a bit tighter/higher ratio'd but thats a nitpick complaint. Also the pickups are a bit on the muddy side but thats to be expected from budget instruments. When playing through amplifiers it does show, however through a vst the sound is more than adequate for recording.

The range of tones is superb from jangly and deep arrpegios to some serious chugging which is hard to resist on high gain settings.

Id recommend this instrument to anyone looking for something unique yet infinitely usable for their collection.

Great guitar

Great guitar for the price! Neck is very comfortable (a bit hard to access to higher frets, but one can get used to it). Sound is good for metar, but there is a lack of clarity when playing chords. Keep in mind that body made of basswood so guitar is a bit heavy.

joy and disillusion at djent styles

After hearing djent guitar styles and alike, I was eager to put my hands on bariton 8-strings guitar. My pocket allowed me only entry level Harley Benton, so be it. Guitar came in very quickly in 5 working days, well packed, no damage. Complete with a with a thin starter cable with plastic coated jacks. The guitar itself is surprisingly well built for such a price and pick ups sound surprisingly well and meaty too, even at the neck position. That's the main pros. Now the cons I spotted after 4 months of use. The action is too high at the nut and bridge and even with that power chords with 010-074 gauge strings are completely unusable, but that's maybe a fault of the strings. Tuning keys are way too sensitive for lower strings, making it unreasonably hard to precisely tune, and somewhat unstable, hard bends on lower strings must be excluded from playing styles, otherwise they will go out of tune instantly. All in all, I'm happy with the price and don't regret my order and looking forward to do some tech fixes myself.

The Eighth Wonder !!

A great guitar. My first 8-string and i am impressed, Good construction, excellent set-up and very comfortable to play. It was recommended to tune it a semi-tone lower than the conventional tuning, but for now i have decided to be conventional. So i have a 6-string with a low-B and F#. It is effectively two guitars in one. Playing Bass lines. melodies and chords on one instrument. Tonally it has a lot of variety, deep lows and shimmering highs. Unplugged it has a beautiful acoustic tone, very clear definition. The neck, though wide, is very comfortable, with fret makings placed along the edge rather than centrally on the fretboard (a minor issue). The scale length is shorter than usual 8-strings, but this is a wonderful instrument. I only wish it came in more colours!!

Perfect to take confidence with 8 string

All this guitar needs to be perfect is a pickups swap and a set of locking tuners. Scale is short (25.5) but it won't be a problem if you stay in standard tuning. I put an arranged by me 08-11-14-19-28w-38-54-70 set of string on it and I have no problem at all with string tension. I also managed to obtain perfect intonation of octaves, you won't have problem pushing saddles back, on the contrary I had to put string saddles for the first two highest strings all the way forward. Truss rod it's perfectly adjustable and now I have low action with no string buzzing, frets are well rounded and polished with no sharp edges, neck is slim and comfy.

But pickups sound awful, you can use them at home for practicing but swapping them as soon as possible is mandatory. Tuners are not that bad but to have a perfect professional instrument I would change that too.

Finish has some minor flaw (little scratch on neck joint, and black paint mark on the neck). Best bangg for the buck for sure!

Great!

I bought one of these and I was going to change the pick-ups but I didn't. The pick-ups are surprisingly good for the price. I now own 2 of these (of one which will be having a pair of EMG808's) and I don't regret it one bit. They look and play AMAZING! Not many people believe the price that I paid for it. The quality of these are absolutely BRILLIANT for the money.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wayne-Calford-Official/241774672510088

A great guitar for stopping burglars!

So back in April.

I was chilling, watching a YouTube video and some guy calls to my house by ringing the doorbell.

So being the lazy mofo I am, I ignore the repeat ringing.

A few moments pass and I hear a huge crash from a window being smashed downstairs

I quickly realise that my house is being broken into and need to get ready to deal with it.

Looking around my room to procure an item I could use to defend myself with I had to opt to picking a guitar.

The guitar I chose was the Harley Benton 8 string guitar.

(Harley Benton R-458 BK Progressiv Series)

Armed with that beast, I charge downstairs and encounter the burglar breaking and entering.

At this point there's glass all over the floor and the burglar is making his way into the house.

Holding the 8 string guitar by the headstock I approach him and tell to get the F out.

The burglar threatened cut to me with a box cutter so bashed him across the head with 8 string!

He hit the ground like a sack of shit but he quickly got to his feet before I hit him again and jumped back out through the window and took off running!

I tried to cut him off by running out the front door but it was locked.

I ran back upstairs grabbed my keys and saw from my bedroom window

that he was getting away.

So instead of going downstairs and out the front door, I jump from the second story window still with the 8 string in hand!

At that moment the burglar looked back while I was mid free fall and look of horror on his face was priceless.

At that point he knew he was F'd!

So he took off running for his life down the street while I charged after him wielding the HB 8 string body raised overhead ready to whack him with it!

I managed to close the distance and I gave him a belt of the guitar across the head and temporarily stun him.

I got infront of him and that this point he brandishes his stanley blade knife and begins slashing at me with it!

Luckily I was able to maintain distance and parry all his attacks by jabbing him in the face repeatedly with the guitar.

Two minutes of knife/guitar duelling we find ourselves out in the middle of the road on a roundabout and all traffic has come to a halt as we continued fighting!

After many well placed strikes the burglar's head was beginning to look like 'Sloth' from 'The Goonies' movie.

Realising that I wasn't gonna give up the burglar then tried to make a get away by hijacking an articulated lorry which resulted in him getting punched straight in the face and falling out of the lorry cab!

He then proceeded to get into another car and threaten the driver telling them to drive.

My heart sank as I thought he was gonna get away but I just couldn't let that piece of shit get away with it, so I chased after the car in what would have looked like a low budget Terminator 2 chase scene!

Somehow I managed to keep up with the car and see where it was going!

The driver had pulled over and the scumbag got out and planned to hide in a barber shop to which he was quickly escorted off the premises because he had a head on him like a buckled mattress.

I ran into them and ask the to call the guards.

Meanwhile the moron went into a neighbouring café and sat down (I think that was the concussion beginning to set in!)

At this stage I had enough and I left the guitar outside and I went in and disarmed and pinned him in the café as staff and customers looked on in confusion but I calmly explained to everyone once I had in an anaconda choke.

The guards appeared in no time and arrested him and put him into the back of the car.

The moral of the story is:

Don't bring a knife to a guitar fight.

A Harley Benton guitar is a great guitar!!

After watching a load of Rob Scallon videos on YouTube, I decided it was time to try out an 8-string guitar. I had never played an 8-string before this purchase, nor have I ever played a 7-string, and so I was dreading the increased neck width, which I was expecting to be overwhelming, much like it is (for me anyway) on a 6-string bass.

Thankfully the increased neck width didn't really phase me, and the whole guitar felt quite comfortable to play, despite the few sharp frets. Much to my surprise the lightweight guitar is actually nicely balanced and not even remotely headstock heavy.

So this guitar has impressed me twice straight out of the box. On top of that all of the hardware seems pretty solid.

Although, I'm not a big fan of the pick-ups, they're a little too bland for my tastes (but since I'm running it through a Marshall Valvestate 8080, they still sound pretty good). And finally the fretboard needs a clean, which seems to be a trend among all the Harley Benton guitars I have played: they all seem to come with dirty fret boards, nothing a drop of lemon oil won't fix when I change the strings.

Overall it's a pretty solid guitar, which I've got tuned to some form of Open F (FCFACGCE). It needs a bit of a setup, a clean and a new set of strings.

Great entry to extended-range guitars

Everything you?d expect from a cheap guitar is missing from this.

Excellent tuners, something I was really concerned about as most cheap guitars come with awful tuning machines, these are really solid, hold tuning extremely well and are very consistent and just sensitive enough to make tuning totally fine.

The neck is delightful with a super light finish that almost feels like playing bare wood. Quite thin but definitely not too thin and a nice, flat D shape make it really comfortable to play.

The frets are pretty much perfect, and another area that was super surprising (cheaper instruments tend to have patchy fretwork at best) ? no sharp frets, everything is filed nicely.

The bridge is really solid, too, and coupled with the neck and frets, makes super low action totally doable.

Knobs and switch are fine and sturdy, nothing is loose/falling off.

The only downfall here is the pickups, they?re far from fantastic and really high output ? I always change pickups on guitars though and considering how easy it is, this really doesn?t put me off.

Stock strings are a little light and, coupled with the short-ish scale length, mean the bass strings were a little droopy when I got this, but a thicker set of strings fixed all that.

For the price, I?m really, really impressed; a pickup swap and a light setup turn this guitar into something I?d stack up against any guitar below £500.

My first 8 string

Received my Harley Benton 8 string today.... Can't believe what you get for your money,,,, the guitar is awesome value!!!! Plays and sounds great straight out of the box..... It feels and looks a good quality guitar.... I was only after a cheap guitar just to see if I would like 8 strings and never would have thought the guitar was going to be so amazing.... The neck feels great with great frets....no buzzing anywhere!!.. Definitely buy with confidence.....it's a lot of guitar for just over £100.... Thumbs up,,, has to have 5 stars for that price alone!!!

Great for the price

I wasn't looking to shred or chug on this - I wanted to try and start with the Charlie Hunter approach, but on a budget. The build quality is solid, the pickups are a bit noisy, but workable. I think there may be a grounding issue on my model, but I can't see any issues with the wiring. Great for a budget. Here it is in action: https://soundcloud.com/thehartleybros/border-blues

A good first 8 String

Bought to dip my toe in8 string and pleasantly surprised by what a well put together Guitar it is, it's only weak point is the pickups, which lack clarity of tone on the lower notes, but, for the price, it's a great guitar.

best kept secret yet

this guitar is amazing. I keep thinking about the price and,what value. I wanted an 8 string out of curiosity and didn't expect lot of guitar for the money'How wrong I was the build quality is five star, you have to try it to believe it. fingerboard is just excellent and it plays on and makes you play it. the range of sounds it can produce, from heavy metal to Jazz to rock, from a Gibson to a strat ,honest it is so complete, only downside I no out of phase facility, but that's about all. Just get one you won't be disappointed.