Harley Benton SC-450 P90 GT Classic Series Reviews

It's a shame because it's a good guitar.

The moment I took it out of the packaging and grabbed the neck, I thought, "This is a great guitar!" When I removed the packaging and looked more closely, I found a crack in the head inlay. I pulled myself together and told myself that it had nothing to do with the sound, but when I looked more carefully, I noticed that the angle of the P-90 on the bridge side was abnormal. Due to the nature of the Les Paul-style body shape, it is tolerable to a certain extent, but it was leaning too far toward the tailpiece. I could adjust this myself, so I didn't think it was a problem and let it go. When I continued to look, it seemed like the pickguard was too low. I gingerly removed the pickguard, and found that the bolts that held the pickguard stays in place had dug into the beautiful body, causing it to cave in. It was a very disappointing experience, as it was such a beautiful, great-sounding guitar.

Nicer than expected

This guitar is good right out of the box. I did a minor bit of fret polishing and setting up, but it didn't need much. It is good as it is.

An excellent classic 1950s LP style gold top!

A great alternative to a Gibson or Epiphone at an amazing price.

Great Guitar.

Looks great sounds great and plays great!

Superb , and a lot less than a Gibbo

I can’t fault this guitar , looks stunning , plays well , nice and weighty and tones of tone . If you’re after a super affordable gold top at an acceptable price you will not go wrong here !

Nothing to say except I love it.

Very impressive P90 SC

Considering the price point, this guitar is very impressive indeed. The quality is excellent, with only some very very minor imperfections in the gold paint finish. The sound is great. The neck is quite chunky, but very easy to play. The hardware works very well. I am often tempted to upgrade guitars, but there's nothing I want to change on this one. Loving it!

P90 sound LP

Plays really well, pups do fine, was thinking of replacing but maybe later on. Great value for a LP and platform for upgrades

Nice

Nice guitar, well built, good for the money you pay, better than Epiphone in my opinion

Love the P90s!

Color and look is great. Guitar came well set up and ready to play. I set up my guitars and polish the frets anyway, so didn’t notice any issues. One thing to note: the bridge pickup is way less output than the neck. I guess that’s the original spec, but i wasn’t expecting it at first. Wonderful sounding P90s

one of my favorites

this les Paul style guitar is one of my favorites. I did not think I could appreciate a gold top guitar as much as I do. the tones that come out of the P 90's is amazing.

Nice guitar……..but!

This is a good guitar especially for the incredible price. Just one problem. It is not actually a gold top. It is a copper top. Others have mentioned this also. I still like the unique color. But if you are looking for a vintage look, it may not be for you. I have a 450 plus Tobacco Burst. It is a stunning guitar. But this should not be under the name of vintage for the color is not.

Fantastic guitar in this price range - good sound, good value for money

I found this guitar extremely appealing and a great attraction amongst my friends. For its price, its a great value for money, and the P90s sound is a stand out!! They are higher output (comparatively) and slightly muddier but I did a sound test on this one & my Epiphone Special ii and I found this slightly better! I found the guitar a little on the heavier side and the gold top colour very slightly musturdy, but I would buy this again & again for the sound & looks it offers for its price. Definitely recommend to try this.

I love this guitar, but have done some work on it

I’m absolutely delighted with this guitar, but you have to be willing to do a little setting up. I’ve done some adjustments to the frets, changed the machine heads and the headstock. I have a collection of guitars including Fender and PRS and I value my Harley Benton Gold top just as much. So definitely worth the effort :)

An insanely good guitar for the money

Although I’ve yet to encounter a bad Harley Benton guitar, this one really is a belter – it’s an insanely good guitar for the money.

After watching various rave reviews on YouTube, I bought it as a modding platform. I soon realised that there was no need for upgrades – the pickups sound great and the bridge, pots, nut and tuners all work just fine.

The only down side was that I’d hoped the basswood body would mean a lighter weight, but that didn’t prove to be the case – at 9½ lb, it's “proper Les Paul” weight. If that's not an issue for you, go for it!

Solid build but needs some TLC

The paint has a smudge but I'm ok with it. There was some fret buzz due to a couple of high frets and it needed a good clean up and fretboard oil. After a few months of tinkering its a good guitar. I've swapped the mini pots for full size CTS and I'm going to experiment with some new pickups. These guitars are great value out of the box but if you want to do some mods it's the perfect platform.

Great guitar

This is a great guitar, the P90s sound great, the guitar setup is good and playability is also good, especially for that amazing price. The looks are also amazing. It has the right weight and feels like an awesome guitar.

A gem that needs a bit of cutting.

For the price, it sounds amazing. Honestly, for a cheap Les Paul clone I got a great piece of wood, but the setup was unfortunately atrocious. The HB DIY kits were playable out of the box, one took very little work to be supremely playable. Well, after assembly, that is. This? The action was somewhere in the stratosphere and it forced me to stop my practice for the day after around five minutes, that's how bad the setup was. I had to wait a while to recover from the garottes that the setup turned the strings into. The frets were uneven, but fortunately my man sorted that out and after some TLC the guitar could be coaxed into comfortably low action and good playability.

The tuners are a bit janky, but they do hold tune just fine. The frets are a bit pokey and they're not really polished out of the box, so I'll need those ends sorted out sometime but they haven't wounded me so far.

These things being said, I'll go back to what I said at the start - it sounds great for the price, and that honestly caught my attention from the start. It's pretty much going to do what I got it for just fine now (And what I wanted was a guitar with P90s!). On one hand, at this price point you shouldn't be expecting miracles, but AFTER sorting out the uneven frets and atrociously high action the guitar is definitely going to be great. I particularly like the neck joint, as it makes access to upper frets excellent for this type of guitar, beating out my Epiphone in that regard. So it turned out pretty cost-effective, even though it did require some extra investment on top of the price. But then again, at this price point getting those guitars set up is kind of a given. The end result, on the other hand, is usually *not* that good.

So yeah, I'm pretty likely to be using this a bit from now on.

Great build quality and great tone! How could you go wrong?

I was looking for parts to switch one of my strats to a P90 guitar and, once I got up to around $250 CAD I thought I might as well see if I could find a cheap guitar with P90s instead. I was NOT expecting to find a beautiful gold top LP copy with P90s for this price - nor did I have big expectations (though a friend has bought a few Harley-Benton guitars and had great things to say about them)

Anyways...fit and finish, the quality of the accoutrements (stainless frets, TUSQ nut, great tuners, etc.) is fantastic - and it has all the mojo and great P90 tone of a Gibson for several thousand dollars less.

This will be my first of many Harley-Bentons (I can tell! lol)

Great guitar at a great price.

Firstly the looks. It looks great! The gold top, IMHO, is fantastic, as is the fretboard - which looks very much like Ebony (it isn't), but oozes class. The headstock design also isn't bad (I did polish that "HB" lettering off the truss rod cover though).

Everything on the guitar is functional, tuners, nut, bridge and potentiometers, are all adequate - no need to change anything really - except..... the switch is pretty naff and the jack isn't really up to the job, so they were swapped out.

Setup is good however there was an issue with scratchy frets, so a quick polish with the Dremel (didn't even need to take the strings off) and that was also sorted.

Sound. It sounds and plays great, very comfortable neck profile, no fret sprout, just a dream to play one those little issues were addressed. I also own a JTV-59 Variax, which has a selectable "imitation" of an original 1952 LP Goldtop, so of course an A-B test was made, and surprisingly the HB P90's do a damn good job at reproducing the original sound of the original LP Single Cut guitar. A damn good job!

Highly recommended. More bang for your money I don't think is possible. If you are looking for something with a P90 single coil sound, at this price the SC-450 is a no-brainer.