Harley Benton R-458 BK Progressiv Series 4-stars Reviews

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.

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.

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.