Harley Benton R-458BK Fanfret 4-stars Reviews

Meshuggah is calling

Firstly, to state the obvious, I bought this guitar mostly to be able to play Meshuggah.

I was very skeptical of HB, reading very mixed reviews about the brand but figured I won't lose much if it's very bad since it's so cheap.

Having only played 6-strings before, some things to note:

- It's pretty heavy - both weight and sound ;)

- Fanned frets required no getting used to, felt like any other guitar

- It is in fact a different instrument, I thought I could get away with having this as my only guitar but some 6 string songs become very hard to play

Pickups: I've read many bad reviews about the pickups, but after dialling in a good djent preset, the mud cleared out and I managed to get a good sound out of it. I'm using overdrive, compressor and noise gate on top of low gain and low bass on the panel (on a Boss Katana 2).

Cons:

- Tuners are very bad, they lose tune constantly, need to be replaced 100%

- Bad setup, bone dry fretboard & some rough frets (common and easily solvable issues)

- Loud grounding buzz (relatively easy fix)

Overall: After a good setup and amp settings, this guitar will amaze you. It chugs great, it looks great and costs basically nothing for what it is. If you have a calling towards 8-string music, this is a great guitar to have and you will barely notice its price.

Good starting point for trying out

In short it is relatively good guitar.

Pros:

Good point for starting out with 7~8 string guitars.

It arrived with action correct height and intonation was pretty much on point.

Didn't find any finger cutting frets or any visual defects on paint or neck.

Sounds good enough that I'm not thinking of upgrading pickups.

Cons:

Could hold string tension better - have to re-tune quite frequently.

Parts feel cheap (what do you expect for this price).

Noise does exist but seen way more expensive gear with more noise.

All in all I would recommend this for jam sessions but not serious recording/studio work.

the only cheapest. a good gateway ! to the 8string realm!

my first 8string fanfret guitar!

solid deal for the price. expect some bits of issues here there but not a deal breaker. just set it to your preferred action and put on some new strings and your ready for some chuggin!

buff the fretboards with lemon oil first because they are too dry. this thing is suprisingly light weight. no neck dive is a plus and the neck feels good. a great platform for future mods just slap in some Fishmans and locking tuners.

Good entry level 8 string

This is a great guitar for getting into 8 strings. The pickups aren't great though and the tuners aren't much better but for the price you can't complain really. I'd recommend it to anyone that wants to get into playing one and doesn't want to spend much on one, or someone that wants a project to upgrade the pups, tuners, and electronics.

Bang for the buck/or project

If you are introducing yourself to 8 strings or looking for a project you really can’t beat this. Is it superior in finish no, is there a few thing to fix, yes. But with some proper EQ work, and a set up. You can even get the stock pickups sounding great. And the minor flaws in playablility that everyone one else has echoed are easily fixable in a few hours. I plan on throwing Fishman Alnicos upfront and Ceramics in the rear to really bring this thing up to chops, eventually… as for now she is great and it’s been fun learning 8 string with this lightweight beast. Setup was near perfect when I got her, and I had no electronics issues at all. I bought my wife the TE tele and a matching TB thunderbird style bass to start learning on and she loved them. I have been so impressed I just bought the 7 string multiscale so I can throw some Active EMGs in it and have a ball with it as well. Overall, are they an entry level ESP, Schecter or Ibanez type… no, but they aren’t far off.

Solid and affordable

If you’re looking for an affordable 8 string, this is the way to go.

Neck is real smooth and the frets are rounded so no work to be done there. Perfect glossy finish, good hardware and some decent enough pickups for its price.

Brilliant for djent and classical, would highly recommend!

Not Flawless, But Good Enough.

Cool distortion sound, Big But not that HUGE scale(fit for me), and Passable design. It has small flaw in its Build but I strongly recommend it for Casual Djent/TechDeath Players.

A great 8 string for beginners.

The overall build quality is solid with the only annoyance that the strings would not fit through the holes of the bridge. The string in question however would go through the hole where High E would be at the bottom of the guitar. Swapping out the Metal pieces resting on the bridge did the trick and allowed me to complete stringing the guitar. The only issue I have with the guitar is the low gain it provides and through some amps it will sound far too distorted. Amp sims and production tricks will take care of it with ease. I would suggest Swapping out the pickups with better ones if one has the budget for it. The last issue the guitar has is the High E string is barely audible at times. Once more, Pickup change is needed. Overall, a great body, finish, rigid, solid and perfect for beginners looking to dive into 8 strings.

Decent 8-string for beginners (8-string beginner)

It is, well, it's just decent

for this price, it's awesome!

but for me, had had problem with pick-up height adjustment.. that was a flaw to me.

good for playabillity

Honestly, wow

I have read a lot of reviews saying "for the price this is really good" I can't help but disagree, a more accurate statement would be " if I bought this for 3 times the price, it would be really good for the price". The problems I have seen other people comment on, I haven't really experienced.

The bad: Ok the pickups are a bit rubbish so plan to change them. The tuners, yeah they hold their tune but again replacing them is probably a good idea. Also, some new strings are in order.

The good: Where to start, oh yes, the neck, its main feature, no rod adjustment needed, the smallest amount of fret leveling, only on the last couple of frets. The intonation was perfect, the action was perfect, slight adjustment on the pickup height. After these small adjustments and polishing the frets I re-stringed it and was paying with a guitar that I would have been happy to pay £500 for.

So why did I get such a cheep 8 string, I actually wanted something cheep and rubbish for try and refinish, re-hardware and setup so see how good I can make a cheep guitar, but sadly I don't think I'll get this with this, it's already at a point where I wouldn't want to change anything apart from the pickups.

Pretty good for a low budget 8 string

the pickups are not the greatest but when you get these pickups for 200 euros and new elixir strings on that chunky boy it`s really good

Worth the money but prepare to invest into upgrades

I was genuinely surprised in a good way that this guitar exists. For that price - it's a treasure. I mean find me a similar 8-string with that budget.

There are nuances with how it's made but nothing that breaks the experience. For example, there are cavities made for active pickups, but there are passive ones installed. There's no way to replace them with active ones as there's no battery compartment made. If you want to replace with passives - your options are limited as well because you'd have gaps that don't look pleasing. Probably the best fit here would be the Lace's Deathbar 4.0 or something similar (probably custom-made).

Pros:

-It's a multiscale guitar!

-Extremely comfortable to play

-Feels pretty solid

-Looks good

Cons:

-Stock pickups aren't good (there's like 0 clarity)

-Tuners aren't exactly bad, they do their job but I plan to replace them

-Requires extra work to improve grounding (the bridge isn't grounded because there's a layer of paint that prevents contact with a grounding wire)

In conclusion: If you're looking to buy one - be prepared to buy replacements for pickups. So some DIY skills are required. After that, you'll have a pretty solid axe without breaking a bank.

Great for trying an 8 string guitar

I wanted to try an 8 string and I had been thinking about this or Schecter Omen 8 but Schecter's price was a bit steep and scale lenght was short, so I went with this HB Fanfret.

Don't get me wrong, for the money it's a great guitar!

Sound is muddy as most other people say but nothing eq, compression or other plugin sorcery couldn't fix.

It also feels cheap (because it is cheap, duh), truss rod adjustment is wonky, tuners are really bad (like extremely bad).

All in all, if you want to see if 8 strings are for you, go ahead and buy it, you won't be disappointed.

Good First Fan 8

This be a very good introduction to fan fret 8 strings. Only complaint is the stock pick ups. Very muddy.

Very nice for the price

I bought this guitar in June 2019, so I guess this year's version could be different.

Tuning pegs suck, 2 of them are a bit loose too, neck feels great, frets could use a bit of filing but they are ok. bridge is nice, perfect intonation from the factory, stock strings are absolutely unusable, throw them in the trash as soon as you get the guitar.

Pickups are ok, not great, not bad, a bit muddy (I like them, for black and doom metal they fit quite well, not much for a tight sounding tone though). Pickups are active and slanted, because of the fan fret, keep this in mind if you want to change pickups (active should all be fine, but you will need slanted passives for sure), with an included 9v. Stock nut is a bit too large and could scratch your hand.

It's a great guitar for modding, change the pickups, the tuning pegs and maybe the saddles and you have a killer guitar for a great price. The fretboard's wood looks absolutely gorgeous (Purpleheart wood), but it was very dry from factory.

Just don't buy it you don't plan on modding, unless you want to tune every 15 min of playing.

It's under € 200... BUT

Not a bad guitar for a first time 8 stringer, but there are some serious flaws.

First the bad:

1. Several people have mentioned the pickups being garbage, and they are totally garbage. They have a bad buzz/hum when the guitar is not being played or when long-sustained notes are played. Anything low-low mid volume that you want to play will have this buzz/hum present. Luckily, EMG makes several 8 string pickups that easily fit this guitar, but for a pair it costs more than the guitar.

2. The tuners are bad! They don't wind up smoothly and evenly. Also, they lose tune easily with the thicker strings.

3. Here's the big one: the guitar I was sent has a raised fret on the 16th fret and it could've been easily caught in the inspection that Harley Benton claims was done. It causes a nasty fret buzz sound on most of the strings from the 13th fret to the 15th. I can see the raised fret looking down the neck and I wish so badly that somebody would've caught that before sending it to me, because i have to exchange it and hope that the next one doesn't have the fretbuzz.

The good:

1. It's an insanely good deal for the money and I have no clue how they make a profit!? for the neck and body alone, It would be worth the same price. Adding a set of high quality tuners and pickups would cost 2x the guitar, making it something that could be played at shows, band practice and on basic recordings.

2. The neck and body feel great, very smooth and easy to play. I've played mostly 7 strings and 8 string guitars, this one fit right in with any of them. The fanned fretboard is smoothly playable and the fret edges were fantastic. My only complaint was the raised fret and hopefully an exchange will fix this.

3. It's easy to set the guitar up to the right levels. Dialing in the specific adjustments took very little time. I like to try different tunings and string gauges, so this easy adjustment is important.

My advice: This guitar is excellent if you're new-intermediate and want to test the waters with 8 string. If you're a regular player-professional then be prepared for some disappointment and/or after-market work.

Absurd for the money

This is an exceptional guitar for the money, and if you're curious about eight strings you should absolutely get this one.

The quality control on this guitar was quite good - a couple of small rough marks on the back, but otherwise the setup and intonation was very good, given how cheap it is and how far it flew to Australia!

The weak parts of this guitar are the pickups, the tuners, and the fretboard. The pickups are quite iffy, but for a practice instrument they're definitely serviceable. The tuners are pretty unstable and they slip/stick a bit. The fretboard feels a bit rough and cheap too.

But these downsides pale in comparison to what you're getting for the price: this guitar comes in at under half the price of the next-cheapest 8 string (including shipping!), it has fanned frets, and it feels good and easy to play. If you replaced the tuners and the pickups, this thing could probably even be stage-worthy.

A Perfect Low Budget 8string Guitar

If you want to transition form a 6-7string to an 8string i think its a great budget guitar. Avg sound and total quality but for the price its an amazing guitar, probably even better than most 400-500eu guitars. A good idea would be to immediately buy a fretwrap to kill as much noise as possible and change the pickups after a while cuz i find them a bit noisy but as i said for the price paid you can't ask for more, they already give you more than what you paid for.

more than i expected for the price

good for a first 8 string - requires a bit of work

I wanted to get into playing 8 string but didn't want to spend too much in case I didn't get on with it.

It took a while for the guitar to get get to me - despite the website indicating it was instock I was later informed that the latest batch were still going through QC.

This QC was not entirely evident when the instrument eventually arrived - the set up was dreadful and required a lot of adjustment to make playable and the stock strings were dead. During string change all 8 of the string ferrules fell out of the guitar. I also machine heads are also of inconsistent quality. There were also scratches on the knobs and unfinished parts on the back of the headstock.

Once I got the set up issues sorted I found it to be a very enjoyable instrument to play. The sound from the pickups is fine - especially when using higher gain tones. The fan fret neck is very easy to adapt to.

For the money it's a good first 8 string.

Having caught the 8 string bug - I'm now looking to make a more substantial purchase.