Harley Benton R-458BK Fanfret 5-stars Reviews

Surprisingly good gain for the coin

Bought this particular instrument as a side project, owned it for few months. Tone is very good, the hums are giving enough punch as well as highs. There was a flaw with the 1st string on the 22nd fret, which was not properly leveled (few hours in the workshop fixed this), but besides that there was nothing striking. Playability is very good, finish was almost perfect. Soon I will purchase this axe again, as I separated with the first one, sadly.

Fantastic for the price!

The guitar plays and sounds great! A fun and affordable way to get into extended range playing. It did show up with a ding at the pointy part of the headstock, and the string ferrules don't stay in the body when you change the strings. Had to file/drill out the hole in the F# tuner because it wouldn't fit the low string in the set of GHS Boomers I purchased. Other than those few small things, I'm completely satisfied and the guitar sounds better than some of my other more expensive ones. Thanks Harley Benton!

Surprisingly Good for the Price

After having the guitar for about a week. I decided to replace the strings with better ones and I concluded that I might not need to replace the pickups afterall. Most people would say the tone is muddy and compared to my EMG,s they're not so bad at all. You might need to do a bit of tweaking in your amp settings, but you can definitely get a good tone out of it as is.

I only had to do pretty minor setup to get this thing going and the fretwork is very good. No sharp ends. Reasonably low action too out of the box. One thing I might consider replacing are the tuners though, but for the price, it's a solid guitar especially for those starting out with 8 strings

Fantastic deal

This guitar is perfrect for any casual guitar player wanting to travel into djent territory without breaking the bank. The fact that it is multiscale is a big plus as well.

However, if one desires to get most out of this instrument, there are a couple of things to consider. First, the guitar will definitely benefit from a visit to a luthier for proper set up upon arrival. Second, the humbucker pickups on this instrument are strictly subpar and need to be replaced if more serious applications for the guitar are considered other than casual playing. If this is done, the sound and quality ratings get +1 star instantly.

overall nice experience

Long time I wanted to try 8 string and fanfret guitar, but can't afford it. With this budget model I get both of these things. Had a 6 and 7 strings guitars. I like the fanfret thing, but realized that 8 string it's a little too much for me. The guitar have a nice build, not bad furniture, only weekly pickups, but it can be replace.

Now I'd ordered the same model but with 7 strings.

Here is some playthrough with this model:

I use this guitar as is

I'm a pro guitarist go by Xoddamnoch I play Metal & Rock. I normally use Schecter gitfiddles(guitars) But i wanted to try Harley Benton And not for nothing this guitar is very impressive. Harley Benton if they keep it up they will be the next Schecter so get while they are still affordable these cats are on to something. Chris Maddox,

Beat expectations!

Not only did it arrive pretty much exactly as it indicated on the website , but it got here to Canada in perfect shape!

While it did require a slight intonation and general setup tweak, it was more-or-less ready to rock out of the box.

Some have slagged the pickups and tuners, but I have found that for the price point, this is a stellar deal. The pickups aren't muddy, and while the tuners aren't ideal, they're not as sloppy as some would have you believe.

The fretwork is good, and I haven't encountered any fret-out anywhere on the neck. While I didn't require a lot of time to get accustomed to the fanfrets, the flat D-shape on the neck does take some time if you're more accustomed to baseball bat necks over Ibanez Wizard-style necks.

For anyone getting into 8-string/multiscale instruments, it's hard to find a better deal than this.

Thought it would be worst.

I am very pleasantly surprised by the build quality. Everything is top notch for the price. I still don’t believe.

For a great value introduction to 8-string fan fret guitars, this is unbeatable.

I bought this guitar mostly for fun, but also to experiment with extended range tunings, during the Covid-19 lockdown for £138 inc shipping. It took a while to get here, but I wasn't disappointed!

Having read the other reviews here and from watching demos on You-Tube, I was expecting to have issues with pickups, frets and tuners, but it I may have got lucky with 2 out of 3.

Mine was almost playable, right out of the box (nearly in tune!) with only an adjustment to the intonation on 1 string and tightening the tuners required to get up and running.

Starting at the top:

Headstock

The pearlescent Harley Benton logo has been moved in-between the 4-a-side tuners; an improvement from previous models, where it was stuck at the very end.

The tuners are unbranded and non-locking but once tightened up should function well enough. Considering it's a fixed bridge guitar, you wouldn't expect tuning stability issues, but all the strings are angled at the nut and this caused my D string to stick slightly, so mine will need re-filed. (While I'm at it I may just replace it for a black graphite type nut, as the white one looks a bit out of place)

The strings that came on the guitar are pretty decent, although they are lighter than the 10s mentioned in the specification

Neck

The C-profile is comfortable with a fast non-stick, satin finish and a tidy scarf joint between the 1st and 3rd frets. Slight neck-relief helps with bends and stops the F# string from rattling off the frets. The fingerboard is excellent, but a little dry and will need oiled, with offset dot-markers (3 at the 24th fret but only 1 at the 12th). On my example, the fret-ends had been well filed, with no sharp edges and the frets were well levelled for a low, buzz-free action, without any dead spots.

On the down side however, after levelling, the frets have not been crowned or polished, leaving them feeling pretty rough and scratchy on the strings.

Body

The neck/body joint is tight and well constructed with 5 bolts and a rounded heel. Access to the top frets is unrestricted and comfortable.

The black gloss finish was pretty good, although I had a couple of tiny dents and scratches and you can make out a bit of orange peel if you hold it to the light.

Pick-ups/Electronics

A lot of people complained of muddy sounding pick-ups with this guitar. Looks like it has been addressed by ditching the pre-amp and going passive, because my example sounds great, on both clean and hi-gain settings.

The huge shielded control cavity seems empty considering it now only houses 1 500K volume, 1 tone control and 1 three-way selector, but I suppose it keeps the weight down and maybe adds some resonance.

I've yet to remove the pups, so I don't know if there's a connection available for a coil-tap, but if so, I'd change out the 3-way switch for a 5-way.

Bridge

On this guitar there are 8 individual bridges, each with their own intonation and string height adjustment. They are well rounded and comfortable for palm muting. Strings are routed through body and the ferrules are all standard guitar-string size, so if you want to use bass strings for the F# and B, you'll need to get do some modification.

All-in-all for the price, this a suprisingly playable guitar which could easily be made gig-able by tweaking the frets, nut and tuners. I know a lot of people are buying this as a cheap alternative to Ibanez/Jackson/Schecter and adding in custom pick-ups, which often cost more than the guitar itself. This might not be necessary any more to get a decent sound. Without the active electronics muddying everything up, with a bit of tweaking of your amp's EQ settings, this beast is capable of suprising tonal variety, from djent to djazz!

A truly amazing guitar

I purchased this guitar because I wanted to try out a 8 string and fanfare guitar. Coming in at < £160 this is the absolute cheapest one I could find.

The build quality and playability for this price is just amazing. Yes, the pickups aren't amazing, but they are more than sufficient for messing around with 8 strings. From my short time with it, I have no complaints with what this guitar provides.

Alas, after spending a weekend with it, I decided to return it. For the sole reason of that I just don't thing 8 strings are for me. I'll just keep to 6 & 7 strings. It probably does not help that I'm not really into djenty music. Because yes. It does (from my attempt).

I highly recommend getting this guitar if you are curious in trying a 8 string. Because if it is for you, then you have a truly amazing guitar at this end of the budget scale.

Great first 8 string

I wanted to try out 8 strings without it being too expensive so thought i

Would give this guitar a go and i couldnt be happier with the guitar....

Aside from dead strings when it arrived and could do with some higher

Output pickups but a great introduction to 8 string for anybody thinking

About it

best multiscale for this price

I have an 8-string Ibanez RG8, I decided to purchase it to try the multiscale fretboard.

I'm totally satisfied with this guitar. Feels comfortable to play it, no real issues with the build. The neck is a bit thicker than I'm used to with my other guitars (especially the Ibanez) but really good.

The only downside of this instrument is the useless original pickups.

From the A string down to the F#, nothing is clear enough, even the power chords are overwhelmed by the bass range of the pickups.

However, with a quick pickup swap, you can easily solve this issue.

For this price, I think it was the best choice to try the multiscale 8 string world. Would buy it again.

The best multiscale 8 for under a grand

Bought this instrument about a month ago and I could not be happier with my purchase. I was initially in the market for an 8 string and also multiscale to get my feet wet with both but wasn't exactly comfortable spending 600~700 for a comparable jackson that I may not gel with, so I looked around for potential harley bentons and spotted this immediately. I figured since it was much more affordable why not try it. Probably the better decision, turns out the overall build quality is on par with our other guitarists' EC258, if not slightly better. The stock pickups were substantially worse, but I already had a set of fishman stephen carpenter sig pickups ready to drop in and it was an easy wiring job. What I was not expecting was for everything else to be solid; bought locking tuners thinking the stock ones would be really bad but turns out they hold tune extremely well and don't jump, something that the other guitarist's ESP struggles with heavily at 3 times the price. All in all, I would absolutely recommend this instrument for anyone interested in multiscales or 8s, just get a set of pickups and you're set!

Does it Djent

I?m working on a prog metal project for a friend and having read a few reviews of the Harley Benton R-458BK 8 string fanfret I decided to give one a go. So, to the unboxing. This guitar had travelled over 750 miles and straight out of the box it was almost in tune which was a remarkable thing in itself. The body was VERY shined and free of dents, blemishes and scratches. The finish on the back of the neck is very good too. As others have pointed out the fingerboard was bone dry but a couple of coats of oil and it?s all OK now. The neck is straight in all the right places and the intonation spot on. Just as good as you would get/expect on a guitar at three times the cost.

On to the hardware. Some reviewers had the saddles as being very sharp. As I tend to rest my hand on the bridge this was or slight concern but, HB seem to have listened and the saddles are now rounded and as smooth as a cashmere cod piece and very well made. The tuners are smooth in operation and hold there tuning very well. I bought this with a spare set of strings expecting them to be really poor, just bits of wire but how wrong was I. The supplied strings are of excellent quality, probably better than the ones I bought. So far so good!!!

Electronics. Pots and switches are smooth in operation and quiet. The pickups are active and? guess what??? They even supply it with a 9v battery. The battery sits in a secure enclosure not a lousy clip that I was expecting. Sound wise, the pickups are good and a decent range of sounds can be achieved with switching and dealing the tone knob.

OK, here?s the slightly negative bit that you were all probably waiting for. It has been observed by others that the frets are sharp and poorly finished on these guitars (probably true on other HB?s too). I experienced a slightly less that smooth finish in ONLY the top four frets (close to pickups) of the neck. It?s only a slight thing and can easily be remedied and only occurs high up the neck. I?m assuming the finishings done once the neck is attached to the body and access is limited due to the cutaways. It isn?t enough to put me off it as every other part of this guitar?s quality are WAY above the price you pay.

So in short, If you want to try an 8 string do not hesitate to give this one a go. at about £130 it is worth way more than the cost and is well worth getting. If you?ve never played a fanfret before it only took me about 15 mins to get used to. As I?d never played a eight string well, that will take a fair bit longer to get used to.

Finally, does it Djent??? Damn right it does!!!