Harley Benton SC-450 BK Classic Series 5-stars Reviews

Great guitar

Feels really nice to play sounds great and the price is amazing

A 400 euro guitar for 150.

This guitar looks, feels and sounds like a guitar just as good as any other 400, maybe 500 euro Epiphone Les Paul, from personal experience. When compared to even more expensive guitars, this holds up, really, really well.

nice sound

thank you for your cooperation

SC 450 BK

Delivery was right on time. The finish is beautiful and the sound is great! Very happy.

Just Wow!

I bought this guitar after owning the SC550-2. My expectations weren't super high due to the price. This guitar arrived flawless and sounds awesome! It even came with a decent set up, all it needed was tuned. I may enjoy playing it more than my SC550 (the neck feels terrific!)

Great guityar for the price!

picked one up to try something I kept hearing about on youtube.....And let me say I am glad I did I have played similar instruments cost hundreds more that were not as nicely setup as this A++++++

Lovely buget Les Paul

As long as I am the owner of this tool, I have never felt discomfort and have not seen any shortcomings. Remarkably keeps the system, the frets do not scratch, the electronics are reliable and, most importantly, the pickups that allow you to steer any sound for any taste and whim. It sounds very elegant on the wedge, and bright and juicy on overload. Once you take this guitar in your hands, it will not be possible to let go of it again).

Awesom

Thats my first guitar,and for that price this is awesome!

By far the best in the price range

When it comes to economic instruments the area where they have yet to catch up is the quality control. The attention to detail in this guitar is beyond what any other brand offers. The fretwork and fret ends, the paintjob both in body and the binding are all fantastic and way above what even brands like epiphone offer in their similar models.

Amazing

It's a wonderful guitar, and it arrived much faster than I thought it would given it was coming from overseas. It looks amazing, and sounds great and stays in tune really well. I strongly recommend getting this if you want a LP style guitar on a budget.

Everything You'd expect and MORE

Ok, so I use this for 70s Rock Style. I do some light gigging with it. This guitar has the feel and quality of much more expensive brands, ahem (G****n). Quality is spot on. Guitar arrived without any flaws whatsoever. It set up perfect for a standard setup right out of the box. I made a few small adjustments according to my needs.

The sound quality is deep and throaty as you would expect from this type of guitar. The cleans are crystalline and the overdrives and distortion are very nice as well. I use this with a Vox AC30 Top Boost Amp. The stock pickups have enough power to really drive my amp. Fretboard was nice and smooth, no rough edges on the frets. I own several HB guitars and have never been disappointed in the quality of any of them. Just as a suggestion, this guitar (super high gloss black) would really be over the top if it had Gold Hardware!

The quality is super

I really liked the guitar, it sounds great, the quality is super

Really impressed

This arrived in Canada today, 6 days after I ordered it. That is impressive considering all the crap going on in the world today. UPS is a customs broker too so they handled that inhouse and there was no long delay as it sat in a customs warehouse. Cost another $50 in taxes and duties, which is about what I expected. Don't hesitate over shipping headaches if you're considering one of these guitars.

Now, for the guitar itself. To start with, the pictures don't do it justice. It is stunning. I couldn't find a single flaw in the finish (well, one minor one but I'll address that later). One thing I didn't like much about it was the light colored fretboard on the guitar in the picture, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it's much darker on mine and matches the guitar perfectly. I don't know if the color varies from guitar to guitar but I am very happy with mine.

It's still cold in Canada so I let it warm up a couple of hours before I tried tuning it. Yeah, maybe I should've waited longer but, you know - new guitar. Anyway, it wasn't far out of tune but it was a bit of a headache trying to get it right with the cheap tuners it came with. Always doing the dance between sharp and flat, and it quickly fell out of tune after a few minutes of noodling around. I'm sure this is partly due to the new strings but the tuners just feel cheap and have too much play for my liking so I will be replacing those right away. I read the reviews before I bought it and I knew they weren't the greatest, so I knew this was probably something I would be doing anyway. To be honest, for a guitar at this price point I would've expected a lot worse issues. If the tuners don't solve the tuning issues I'll try a Tusq nut and maybe a roller bridge.

I'm just a new player who only plays in my basement on a Mustang amp so as far as the pickups go, they sound just fine to me. They really can growl a lot more than my single coil Strat. They are a little tinny when I turn the dirt on though. They may get swapped out sometime down the road but for now they will work just fine.

As for that quality issue I mentioned, another reviewer said the screw for the pickguard was too long on theirs and had marred the finish. This was the case with mine too. It's nothing major - just a small dimply in the paint under the pickguard that can't be seen anyway. I cut about a millimeter off the screw and that problem is solved. Another thing, which is just me being nit picky - the screw doesn't sit flush in the pick guard. The hole is chamfered so it should but it's not wide enough. As soon as my son returns my drill I'll fix that so it sits in there the way it should. It doesn't effect playability at all and some might not care, but my OCD won't allow me to overlook it.

Overall, I'm very happy with my purchase. I knew it wasn't a high quality instrument but you are getting a lot more than the price point suggests. None of the small things I mentioned are at serious enough that I would hesitate to buy another Harley Benton guitar. It is an excellent platform to gradually improve upon as my playing gets better and I think I could end up spending a few hundred in upgrades and have a guitar that would rival one costing thousands. If you're on the fence about getting one of these, check out some online reviews - there are lots on YouTube. Unless you're expecting to get Gibson quality for a couple of hundred dollars, I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

Great musical instrument for the price

I'm very pleased with the guitar. For the money it costs, you can't find a better guitar. The guitar that came to me has no defects, at least I could not find them. It looks much more beautiful live than in the photo from the website. I bought this guitar to play at home, I am not a professional musician, I have never held a guitar more than 200 euros in my hands, but I will say that it sounds no worse than the Epiphone Les Paul 1000. I am definitely satisfied with the guitar, I advise you to buy it.

With regard to delivery and packaging. The guitar traveled to Russia for 12 days. The packaging is not wrinkled, in the box itself additional paper was laid so that there would be no shaking.

Really nice guitar

I bought this to be a project guitar and it turns out that there is very little projecting to do to it. It has a couple of little blemishes on the fret board but nothing that hurts the way it plays. I have read in other reviews that the neck is thinner than a 60's slim taper. Mine has a big fat chunky baseball bat neck, not what I was expecting but so far I'm really liking it.

The tuners are pretty good

The pickups are ok

The paint job is beautiful

The set up is not good enough -- it's PERFECT!

In the future I'll change the pickups to a set of SD 59's and that's probably about all.

This is a less than $200 guitar shipped to the United States so don't expect something like a high dollar Gibson to show up but rather something along the lines of a $600 Ibanez with a few blemishes in it.

Great bang for the buck.

Gotta get 1 well worth it.

Solid Construction & Adequate Sound

Guitar arrived 2 weeks after purchasing in a slightly damaged packaging. Overall the guitar is beautiful, a solid & heavy construction with no visible imperfections. It holds tune well but the humbuckers leave much to be desired when it comes to output. The 3-way switch has a satisfying feel but the tone & volume controls don't taper smoothly.

Fantastic

I just love this guitar! Sound and feel are phenomenal. Definitely recommend.

Amazed

Always fancied a black lp, but not enough to pay Gibson prices, or epiphone for that matter. Enter the Harley, wasn’t expecting much at this price, but this is really good.

Amazing bang-for-buck

I bought this because I hadn't played in 10 years, and just wanted something to jam out on at home. Also, getting the band back together, and may swap out my bass-playing duties for a bit of guitar here and there.

After performing a quick setup (no guitar is ever immediately playable at this price), played like a dream. Far better than expected. Let's start from the bottom up...

Bridge - bridge came a bit high (I like lower action) so be prepared to adjust that. I recommend getting the Harley Benton Guitar and Bass Toolkit to aid with this, if you don't already have tools for the job)

Once the action was lowered, I had to tighten the truss rod just a tiny bit. This was smooth and a quick enough adjustment. Now the action is low and even across the fretboard.

Neck - the neck is fantastic. Smooth finish on the back, stunning fretwork (no sharp ends, no levelling needed - you'll never see that happen at this price). I've heard people say it's a bit chunky, but I think the profile is just right.

Hardware - everything seems solid. The only thing I'd consider changing at this point are the tuners, though the stock ones do the job well enough.

Sound - it sounds like a LP. Very decent pickups (amazing for the price, really). Won't disappoint, but also won't blow your mind... until you remember how much you paid for it.

Conclusion - if you want a new guitar at an affordable price, you cannot beat this.