Harley Benton R-458MN WH Progressive Series Reviews

Love it!!

Bought this for my son last Christmas, and we are very pleased. Great action. great sound, and solidly built. He's getting and HB bass this year.

This is a very fun guitar. After seeing its price I said to myself that I must be getting one of these beasts. It's not a perfect guitar from any point of view. What I appreciate is that it came with leveled frets, but I guess that the workers forgot also to polish the frets after (not that a big deal, it is an easy fix). Also mine came with a broken pickup frame. This also was not a big deal as well, and after reporting this issue, I was immediately sent another frame (thanks!).

For anyone who likes the more growling genres of music, I can say that it's quite fun to hit that trembling F# and shake the walls of your house a bit. The price of this instrument is more than appropriate. Do not be afraid of the number of strings, I still get lost on the neck, but it's good to experiment and have fun with it.

Pros:

-it djents (if anyone was wondering)

Cons:

-small build issues (easy to fix mostly)

Good guitar but...

I bought it to try 8 string guitars before i'm buing something expensive. Got my package in two weeks with no damages on finish.

First impression is well made intrument, but you need to tune it and invest some money and time.

Neck is awesome, its very comfortable to play. But heel of the neck was not flat so i placed 0.7mm pick under heel to compensate angle. After this i can adsut height of strings.

Pickups are ok. Out of box bridge pickup was vey noisy, i thought it was bad quality, but as turned out ground cable unsoldered. Don't know its delivery porblem or so it was in the store.

Tuners are cheap and i planned to replace them. Not very responsive and not hold tune well.

Other furniture good don't need to be replaced.

Overall it's good intrument to try 8 strings.

Good choice for this price range

Guitar is well built, electronic working good, frets are more or less even and not scratching the palm of left hand. So I made settings of action once and all fine, every single fret reproducing of good clean sound.

The only one thing I changed is nut on the neck, I put on bone nut as the factory one is hollow and did not provided to me proper tuning stability.

Regarding the sound, bridge pickup sounds better to me, clean and chuggy. Neck pickup muddy and reproducing the distorted sound.

I am using it to play different genres: blues, heavy, death metal and of course Meshuggah covers!

In conclusion, I am very happy with this guitar. I am using it as my travel axe and it fully met my expectations on this regard. Can recommend to the beginners and as a travel axe for non pro musician.

pretty good

Build quality:

my unit came with excellent fret ends, no sharp edges. with that price point though you might want to polish frets.

Volume pot for my unit is odd. It doesnt do almost anything until you start to reach to the max volume area where it changes drastically with small adjustments.

Tuners are okay i would say.

I think bridge saddle screws could be a bit shorter.

Sound:

lower end can get muddy. otherwise its decent for what the price is. Pickups are not something that you have to immediately swap out.

I didnt have ground noise problems with my unit.

Summary:

I think its a great guitar to get into extended range and see if extended range is for you.

Brilliant for the money

I bought this Guitar to try out an 8 string guitar. I have found myself coming back to it rather regularly!

Pros:

Affordable

Comfortable to play - For an 8 string that is

Looks Great

Cons:

The pickups aren't the best.

Overall I think It is a well worth purchase. The pickups aren't the nicest sounding things on earth, but they're not a deal breaker. Personally I think this guitar is great for anyone wanting to get into 8 strings (or extended range for that matter). Should you want to go further with it, this could be a great for a modding project.

This is actually very good

14th fret onwards were kinda rough for my guitar so you either break it in with the factory strings or polish them just before you install a new set of strings.

Tuning the 8th string F# down to E loses its clarity and definition so you might want to get a thicker gauge than the factory .74 gauge like an .80.

Maybe changing the pickups can also fix this problem but keep in mind it's a 26.5". It remains very snappy if you leave it at F#.

Fastest mod you can do out of the box is to wire the pickups into series.

Here's the color coding:

Red- Hot output

White- coil tap

Black- coil tap

Green+bare- ground

The red wire is soldered together with the white wire on the selector so what you want to do is to remove the white wire. The black wire is also soldered to the back of the pot. Remove it.

Solder white and black together and tape them or use heatshrink tubing. Something better would be buying a metric size(8mm) push-pull potentiometer and solder it there.

US size potentiometers require reaming of the holes to 9.5mm.

Great to start playing 8 String

I bought this to try out the 8 string guitar.

Quality of the guitar is fantastic, everything is solid, no sharp frets, neck very smooth feels nice. Fretboard also feels prestige.

The sound of the guitar is good, responsive pickups.

Would recommend this to try out playing 8 string guitar without needing a massive investment!

I have no need to want to upgrade, very happy customer

I play at home.

Super for my money !!!

Frets and tuners by four.

Everything else is super!!!

Tuners have a small backlash.

Frets - a small height.

I recommend :-)

Great for the price

For what it costs, this guitar does a perfect job. Finishing and fretwork is good, tuning stability is good for this kind of price. Pickup output is a little low, but the sound is good.

Unbelievable Value for Money ratio!

I bought this guitar from my cell phone on a Netflix series watching break. 7 days later it arrived and I just couldn't believe it.

The finishing, hardware, design, details, intonation, action...everything perfect.

Clean and distinctive sound once plugged in my Axe-fx.

Compared with a really expensive one that was used in my studio, I can say that it had a more focused low-end which was useful for me and it was lighter, which is a good thing.

Tuning is holding up well enough, dont know if it can get on the road, but can definitely serve for a backup guitar while touring.

Keep it up!

Unbelievable value and great guitar

As a long time guitar player I wanted to try out a guitar with additional strings but didn't want to invest a lot in it so picked up this guitar not knowing what to expect. First off the shipping. Was shocked how quickly I received it from germany. I was expecting 3-4 weeks and it turned out a little over a week in the USA. Well packaged and arrived in perfect condition. Unboxed the guitar and was just amazed at the quality of instrument I received. The paint was flawless, the neck and setup was spot on and everything just worked. An eight string is going to take some getting used to but looking forward to the journey. If you want to try an eight string and don't want to spend a lot to do it get this great guitar. Still amazed at the quality I received for the price.

It's a keeper

I've been using this guitar for some time now and I can only say it is just awesome. Guitar does not feel cheap. Aesthetically it is very pretty and well concepted. I tuned the F# to E and its great. Tuners work just fine, intonation can be set really well, string action can also get quite low. I love the neck, it's just fun to play. Only thing that could be better are pickups, but it would be irrational to expect excellent pickups on such a cheap guitar. Don't get me wrong pickups are just fine, but there is room for improvement. Clean tone is exceptional,distortion is OK. Unplugged guitar resonates very well. That's about it. A lot of bang for little buck I would say. It's my first 8 string BTW.

Yeah, it's pretty nice.

It feels good, sounds good, and the price was extremely low for what you get. It required very little set up. Shipping carriers were rough with it and knocked the pickups out of it. I put the pickups back in and tuned it up. It's sounds pretty nice. It could use a little more adjusting but it's not urgent. It's very playable as it is.

Overall, it's a really nice guitar at any price and it didn't break the bank. Now I have two more strings to learn how to play with.

Incredible value - very nice neck wood used

I bought this 8 string as in the past I had used a 7 string (Ibanez RG7620) and wanted to try an 8 as it seemed like fun. Obviously just on a whim you're not going to drop several hundreds of pounds like you'd have to to get the entry level Ibanez or Schecter models. However, for this price I thought it was worth trying out!

The bridge is very nice hipshot style, tuners seem reliable, fretwork was decent as there was no buzz or choking straight out of the box.

The neck is comfortable feeling, quite a flat radius but also the wood has a kind of raw unfinished feel which I vastly prefer to gloss.

Pickups have plenty of clarity which is kind of crucial for this type of guitar.

Only con is the middle pickup setting is slightly odd, would have preferred some other arrangement, but I'm sure a tech would be able to sort this..

Overall great value for money, and to be honest unless you're going to spend loads more, I don't think it's worth looking at any other 8 strings under the price of £5-700!

Kachestvo sborki gitary za yeye tsenu prosto neveroyanoye. Luchshiy vybor dlya togo kogo interesuyet pervaya 8 strunnaya gitara. Ne ochen' chitayemyy chistyy zvuk. No ona ne dlya etikh tseley i nuzhna. Yest' mysl' pomenyat' datchiki i mekhaniku. Na vysokom geyne rychit otlichno.

Развернуть

253/5000

The build quality of the guitar for its price is simply false. The best choice for anyone interested in the first 8 string guitar. Not very readable clear sound. But it is not for these purposes and is needed. There is an idea to change the pickups and mechanics. In high gain he growls perfectly.

Fantastic Guitar for price

I bought this guitar just as a simple entry into 8 string playing and was blown away by the quality for the price. Holds tuning really well and the neck profile felt really comfortable, considering I jumped straight from mainly playing Ibanez 6 strings to this guitar that really is something.

The pickups sound fine and are about what you'd expect at this price range, nothing particularly good or bad to say about them.

The hardware is fairly bog standard but as I mentioned the tuning holds great and frets didn't need any working on when I received the guitar. There was some slight buzzing with the lowest string but a bit of truss rod adjustment will send that away.

Couldn't recommend this more for someone wanting to get into 8 strings but obviously would suggest an upgrade if you wanted to do gigs or something.

Overall Impressive Instrument

Considering the fact that this is half of the price of the next cheaply available 8 string (which I have played) this guitar is outstanding.

The pickups are very clear and punchy (little too bright, but not worth crying over). The neck is extremely comfortable and easy to get used to when transitioning to extended range.

The only problem that this product arrived with is a dry fret board but an easy fix.

Want a cheap 8 string that outclasses it's pricier rivals? Get this!!

an amazing guitar

i've been a lead guitarist for 5-6 years now and i have got loads of guitars 3 jacksons 2 vintage guitars an ibanez and 3 harley bentons and this guitar is one of the best playing out the lot it 100% blows my mind there is not a dead spot on the guitar action is lush the only reason it's not a 5/5 is because the bridge pick up is so crap that i would never use it plugged in till it's gone BUT the neck pickup is surprisingly good! not just an amazing guitar to get into 8 strings but just an amazing guitar i hope to still have it in 20 plus years

Perfect starting point for those interested in 8 string guitars

The Harley Benton R-458 is, simply put, a very good guitar, not just for the price, but in general. If you're looking to try an 8, but don't want to invest a large amount of money, then look no further. This guitar comes highly recommended, and is suited to all genres of music from the heaviest of metal, to the smoothest of jazz.

Pros:

- Well Constructed

- Surprisingly lightweight (lighter than my Epiphone Les Paul)

- Arrived nicely set up, and can easily be adjusted to personal preference

- Very Affordable!

Neutral:

- Pickups are nothing special, but that's to be expected on a guitar in this price range. They're useable.

- Minor blemishes in the finish. These don't bother me, and are purely aesthetic.

- Hardware is functional, but feels a little cheap.

Cons

- The scale length is only 26.5 inches. Tuning down to f# (and lower) is doable, but requires a thicker string than I would like to keep tension. A scale length of at least 27 inches would be ideal.