Harley Benton SC-450Plus LD Vintage Series Reviews

Insane value

This guitar is unreal i am blown away by the resonance of this thing unplugged it feels alive in the hand the same way a gibson does, maybe i got lucky. Nice two piece body frets could do with a polish and machine heads are cheap but do the job. I seriously can not believe they can make any money selling these with delivery for £149

Game changer

I can't believe I got this for £149 shipped to the UK. Needs a quick set up and there are some minor blemishes but still fantastic for the price. Thanks guys

Yes!

I was super impressed by this guitar. All around great find!

Nice sound and looks good

Guitar looks very nice. push pull switches works fine and sound is worth of your pay

Excellent

Realty beautiful well playing guitar

Best choice for the first guitar

I was impressed. Build quality is very good (to be honest it has very small painting defects BUT you need to look carefuly in order to find it. So this is not problem for me AT ALL). Sounds good. No additional work on frets required. Good job Harley Benton! I hope I buy more HB guitars in future.

I guess this is the best gutar for its money and a great choice for a beginner.

The Usual Tweaks and Then Some

You have to always expect to spend a little time and effort w/ new HB’s at this price point. Usually intonation tweaks, truss rod adjustment and action height. On this one, during a professional set up, my luthier had to glue down the 11th fret on the treble side and file all of the nut slots. Also, there’s a hairline finish crack coming off of the nut. I live in the States so the $55 my Luthier charged me for setup/repairs was cheaper than the shipping charges to send it back.

Awesome would order again

I’ve added the Harley Benton to my collection of guitars. It looks great and sounds great. I like this brand and will order again.

Pretty excellent for the money

As many others have noted, Harley Benton guitars usually greatly outperform their price points. I'm a hobbyist so I don't see a world where I'd ever feel the need to buy a real Gibson, but I have never owned any kind of Les Paul copy and this one was an attractive, affordable way to dip my toes into those waters.

Pros:

- Great finish. Very attractive guitar, no two ways about it.

- Playability is great. The action was pretty much perfect for my taste out of the box. I made some small adjustments to fix intonation and gave the truss rod a quarter turn to address some high E buzzing, but that's all that really needed to be done to make the guitar very playable.

- Sound is very good. The "Roswell" humbuckers have a nice clean tone and work well with a driven amp or any variety of distortion pedals. The tone and volume pots are both smooth and seemed to have a pretty good range to my ears.

Cons:

- Tuning stability could be better. At first, I thought this was mainly a problem that could be fixed with upgraded tuning machines, but now I'm thinking it's probably more of a nut issue. I did develop some high E buzz after owning this for about half a year and I was able to mitigate that with a truss rod adjustment, but I still can't seem to totally get rid of it. Combined with the rather poor tuning stability, I think maybe all of my issues could be fixed with a better-constructed nut.

- The coil split option for the pickups is cool, but not very useful to me in the end. I don't know if this is just because I've mostly been a single-coil player in the past and I've never played a more expensive guitar with coil splitting, but to my ear there was not much of an effect other than reduced volume/increased hum when splitting this guitar's humbuckers. Tonal quality was not really close to the platonic single coil sound that I think of. I probably would have been just as well off saving a few bucks and going with a Harley Benton with standard humbuckers.

its OK, but...

So, I brought this as my first guitar after seeing great reviews on YT from China Guitar Skeptic and EytschPi42.

It arrived in good time and survived its journey halfway around the world with no obvious damage.

I played it for a long time without an amp, so I didn't find some of the electronic issues until it was too late to return it (along with the hassles that come with being half a world away), but here is a list of the defects I found in my unit

Cosmetic:

I ordered a Lemon Drop. What I received was a Honey Burst.

The neck, sides and back were polished to perfection, the front looked like they had skipped the final buff, or some overspray had landed on it.

The veneer book match joint is centered on the strap button, but not the tail piece or bridge - not sure if the veneer is off or if its the hardware

Functional:

Most of the tuners were not installed straight. One is so obviously out I had it fixed.

Pickups are offset - the Rhythm appears centered to the neck and strings, the Treble is offset towards the bass side to the point where the e string is almost off the pole screw.

Tone pots - when I eventually got an amp, there was pretty much no difference through the throw of the pots, apart from scratching noises at 3 & 5 positions.

Coil splits/ volume pots - just underwhelming. The knobs are sitting on the body and are so stiff you have to leaver them up with a pick.

Conclusion:

I've had it set up and it plays pretty well, or at least that's what players I know think. Its been a good introduction instrument and a great platform for doing your own upgrades, I've changed the pots, done the Peter Green mod and will change the switch and jack next. Its a great first instrument and development platform, just don't expect it to be perfect.

Great guitar needed setup

Arrived with an action so high I worried that something was badly wrong.

A swift adjustment of truss rod and lowering the bridge yielded a surprisingly low buzz free playing experience.

Good sounds and versatile with the ability to split the humbucker for a single coil sound.

Maple top has a visual depth that catches the light.

For the price incredible guitar (if you know enough to set it up). At any price a good solid playable guitar. Pickups are a matter of taste, some will swap out no matter what, but these don't squeal, aren't microphonic and I don't feel the need to change them.

Love this guitar

Ive bought a ton of Les Paul copys but they all needed work when I got them I never had that problem whith a Harley Benton the lemonburst on this guitar is flawless and for the money this guitar sounds great

Amazed

I feel lucky today. I have taken delivery of this guitar today and I am stunned at how good it looks and sounds. All the way from Indonesia to Germany to the UK for £166 including shipping and tax. What a crazy world it is that enables that to happen. This guitar arrived completely unmarked and it looks beautiful. I cannot understand how this is possible for the price. I hope the guys who make these get a fair wage for creating such value and quality for us lucky Westerners.

I am giving it 99.7 / 100 as one of the pup securing screws isn't put in quite straight, and as other purchasers have mentioned the fingerboard was very dry. Half an hour with the Lapella oil and it now looks and feels much better. Apart from that I am very happy indeed - it's going to take a few days for me to feel like I haven't stolen it!!

For such a tiny amount of money this is an incredible bargain. Thanks!

Excellant guitar! Especially for the price!

Disaster. Terrible quality control.

Delivery was very slow. It took two weeks.

Guitar packaging was ok but I immediately noticed a ding on the back edge of the upper bout. Then on closer inspection I discovered glue splattered on the fingerboard at 5 different fret positions. I had to scrape this off with a razor blade and sand with fine grit sandpaper.

I tried to tune the guitar but it would not stay in tune. The machine heads were loose and useless. I had to replace them which cost me €80. After that I realised that I could not intonate the guitar as the nut was a disaster. The height was too high and it kept pinching the string. It was cut horrific. I had to replace this shocking piece of hollow plastic with a tusq nut. This cost me a total of €40 to buy and get fitted. My luthier informed me that he had a problem fitting the new nut as the nut slot was uneven. He had to level it and insert a shim. He also noticed that two of the frets were high and had to level them.

The pickups are ok but not great. They tend to be very muddy with higher gain. The pots are aweful. They have no gradual taper. They don't increase or decrease volume and tone uniformly. The split coil function is rubbish. It just decreases the volume of the pickups.

The colour and finish on the top is nice, neck feels good and the guitar resonates really well. These were the only reasons why I decided not to return it. The guitar ended up costing me almost €300 and still doesn't include an upgrade of pickups, pots, switch or jack.

I thought that I was getting a single cut for a bargain but I was wrong. Overall I was very dissappointed with my purchase. It was a nightmare and I am very reluctant to purchase another Harley Benton guitar.

I regret not spending a little more for an Epiphone 50s Les Paul which is a quality instrument. Epiphone guitars also have a resale value should you wish to trade up in the future.

faced with a problem

Hello, I ordered a harley benton sc450 electric guitar and ran into a problem. The pickup switch does not work well in the bridge position. When I switch to the bridge pickup, the sound may disappear, the switch itself is very shaky. In general, I like the guitar, I would not like to send it back, help solve the problem.

Honestly, just get one for yourself and decide.

I'm sensitive when it comes to my guitars. If they have niggles, or don't play well, I really struggle to motivate myself to pick them up.

I had borrowed an Epiphone Les Paul (Studio II I believe) from my best friend a couple of years ago, and it put me off LP shapes to be honest. It didn't feel right, it didn't hold tune and it was quite difficult to play.

Granted it needed a good setup, but still.

I heard good things about HB, and I saw the Lemon Drop SC-450plus and immediately wanted it.

I won't say it's perfect, because it isn't, but for the price it's damn close. It plays well, it sounds great, it's heavy which I love, the sustain is excellent, the setup was almost spot on when it came, I've only put new 10s on and touched the intonation on the A and G strings a half turn each, and it's wonderful now.

The fretboard was quite dry when it arrived, so I filled a washing up bowl with soapy water and let the neck sit in it for a few hours.

Not really, but I did give it a coat of Dunlop's lovely lemon oil and now it feels smooth and silky.

The pickups are a little dark for my taste, but it's hard to judge properly because I only have a Line 6 Spider IV 100w at the moment which at very low volume is not a good representation of their true output.

Please get one for yourself, they're too affordable to second guess yourself.

Solid sound and high quality!

This is my first own LP and I'm absolutely happy about it :)

All is ok - quality, color, hardware and first of all - the sound.

Very playability guitar for this money. In all positions sounds very nice.

Stunning Value and Quality

I could hardly believe the cost of this guitar: far too cheap, surely?

I read reviews and watched videos to try and find a catch. And after taking delivery of the guitar I have to say, there is no catch. At £166 I decided to buy, and I am delighted.

Straight out of the box, the guitar is set up beautifully and sounds fantastic. As is often the case, a new set of strings will enhance the sound but the overall build and value is exemplary. I simply cannot fault this guitar.

I will mainly use it at home but I don't see why it shouldn't be equally suitable to live work, including touring.

The materials are reassuringly robust and solid, and they give feel of a quality way beyond their cost. Sustain and clarity of sound is excellent: no buzz; no hum. The fretboard is smooth and allows easy playing, as does the action. The guitar is well-balanced and the body sits well when shoulder slung.

How this guitar is made for this money I will never know. This guitar is an absolute steal. I can only see myself buying more Harley Benton, as should you.

Great for its price

This is soo good like I’m speechless