Harley Benton SC-450Plus LD Vintage Series 5-stars Reviews

My First Guitar

After too may years of dithering I finally got around to ordering my first ever guitar. Over the last 6 months I have watched loads of YouTube reviews on many different makes and models and almost went for a completely different make and model from another supplier, but this one always seemed to get great feedback, so I took the plunge.

Ordering was very easy through the website and along with the guitar I purchased a practice amp and few other bits and pieces.

My order was placed on the Friday morning and I was able to track the progress from the moment it was dispatched all the way to my front door, here in the UK.

The package was delivered on the Tuesday, so only 4 days later and when you take into account it sat in a UPS warehouse in Germany over the weekend before moving on to the UK this was I thought was quick.

On arrival the outside box was quite heavily damaged but UPS asked that we take pictures before their driver left just in case the contents were damaged or missing. On opening the outer box I can confirm everything was still in the packaging including the small packet of picks. The guitar box had a small hole in it where the switch had come through the cardboard, the block of polystyrene that would normally cover this switch had been dislodged in transit, but on close inspection of the guitar itself there was no damage.

I have now started to learn how to play, only two chords so far but I want each one to sound right and for me to go to them relatively easily before I learn another.

Anyway I only need one more and I should be able to play the whole of Status Quo's entire back catalogue if the rumours are true.

As a complete novice I can't tell you if this plays any better or any worse than a similar priced guitar of another brand but I can say that I like the way it feels when I hold/learn to play it. There were no rough edges to the frets, the build quality seems excellent, the sound to my untrained ear is fine but I do have to check the tuning every time I pick it up.

The tuning issue may be due to the high temperatures we have been experiencing I assume temperatures, and atmospheric conditions can affect the materials it's made from, but what do i know?

For me, this appears to have been a great purchase and a very simple one too. I am really enjoying learning to play on this guitar and every time I pick it up for my next brief session it makes me smile.

Give me another 20 years of practice (if I live that long) and who knows what I will be able to play?

Amazing!

This guitar is just amazing and for the Price, nothing could buy more!

Love this!

I'd wanted a LP shape for a while and this seemed as true and genuine to a 50s LP that my price range could manage. This is satisfyingly heavy (although each to their own), and the maple top is stunning. Action good out of the box for me, changed strings and very happy indeed. After a week or so, it has started to show up my other guitars somewhat but that says more about this than it does about them.

Very pleased I went for this overall

AMAZING

I absolutely LOVE this guitar!!! I have always wanted a Gibson Les Paul ever since the first time I picked one up...but couldn't justify the cost. The Epiphones felt cheap and other "knock offs" never felt quite right either. The HB SC-450 feels great in my hands and has a fantastic tone. I will definitely invest in more Harley Bentons in the future!

Outstanding sounding and finished guitar .

I’ve hardly put it down since it arrived.

One of my favourites.

Mind Blowing

I Have been using this guitar for more than a year now. The sound, the Quality and the versatility (Jazz, Rock, Blues, Bossa, Reggae, Seggae etc.) of this guitar is beyond expectation. At this unbeatable price, I'm sure you will be able to save some money in order to buy other amazing stuffs.

Beautiful and sounds great, delivered in half the original time, and in great condition.

Please, buy this guitar!

Amazing quality guitar fo this price. Do not compare it with Gibsons, Ibanez and others. It has very own character. Great sustain, very melodical, great variety of sounds.

wow

this is an absolute gem, I'm feeling like an idiot for not noticing this brand before.

I bought it as a beginner's guitar but the sound is clean and nice.

Everything's smooth and clean and polished, button's all working as intended, no sticking, the fretboard although felt a little dry, and that's not a problem.

Love the guitar..but would nic if they could start making some of these guitars chambered to reduce weight.

A Real Gem

This guitar looks and sounds superb. I cannot find anything to fault it. Well worth the money.

Harley Benton SC-450Plus LD, удивительная гитара!!! За малые деньги я получил гитару с прекрасным, универсальным звуком в идеальном состоянии, как внешнего вида, так и электроники! Датчики звучат потрясающе, а за эти деньги, это вообще подарок! Любителям музыка Гари Мура, стоит обратить особое внимание на эту гитару, так как ей доступно воспроизвести все нюансы и особенности исполнения композиций гениального Мура!!! Вообщем гитара из коробки только порадовала! Остаётся загадкой, как за такую низкую цену можно создать такой замечательный инструмент и стоит ли выкидывать деньги, не коммерческому гитаристу, на дорогие инструменты ведущих фирм из-за надписи на грифе?!!!

New Guitar Day!!!

After much consideration I chose to place an international order for a very highly reviewed and inexpensive guitar. Initially I had intended to buy a kit but stock was out between 1-6 weeks and I was wishing for something sooner. Looking at only in-stock items I chose a guitar combo. The combo was shipped within a day or two and parcel #1 of 2 arrived in two weeks. Ultimately I am very impressed with the perceived quality of the instrument. Construction and finish appear to be top notch. I have not yet heard it's amplified sound because parcel #2 of 2 appears to be hung up in transit as these two weeks have not seen a change in shipping beyond "shipment will be transported to the destination country". That portion of this order is frustrating to say the least! Awareness of current world events is not lost on me but I fail to understand two parcels shipped same day and one is far behind in shipping time? If only the puzzle could be quickly sorted!

Extremely good tool. Great sound. I recommend to everyone

I like it!

I was really surprised when I received this guitar. Stunning looks, great sound and playable out of the box.

For the price, it is an amazing guitar and I'm enjoying playing it without any regrets.

The guitar (manufactured 08/2019) is as close to a "true" LP shape as possible. There are subtle differences, but most of them are barely noticeable - no problem here. What pleasantly surprised me was a thinner (lighter) 3-piece body and 3-piece (scarf joint + heel) neck, neck joint shape that is super comfortable for better hand reach, and (!) a maple top. I measured almost 2cm of wood glued to the mahogany corpus. This is what is missing on my more expensive 2017 Epiphone. On top of this maple cap is a nice AAA flame maple veneer. The binding is in a quite nicely cut slot and seems to be clear any filler. There are rare spots of imperfections in the wood and the lacquer but nothing that would bother me. On the back, there is no veneer and you can see the real wood. The guitar seems to have a long neck tenon, which is also a plus. There is some dust in the guitar. Where is the place with most of the dust? You would not guess - it is below the tuning machines.

The fretboard was a little dried and in need of some oil. Strings were rusty, frets in need of polishing, but really - who plays a new guitar with default strings. What surprised me was no buzzing - after a closer inspection I noticed, that some frets were leveled (nice surprise), unfortunately, the leveled frets were not properly crowned and there were some rougher flats spots. These flat spots should be crowned and frets polished before some serious bending. Of course, a full fret job is a good choice and should satisfy the most demanding players. I was able to lower the action to personally preferred ~1.5mm (high E)/ ~2mm (low E) at 12th fret without any buzzing on the guitar as was shipped. The fret ends were not sharp and I consider them fine, but some additional fine-filing is advisable. The fretboard inlays show some tolerances and filler, but nothing that bothers me. The intonation was set quite correctly.

The neck was set up perfectly for 010 gauge strings. The neck profile is for me a comfortable C. The nut is a plastic one. A recommended upgrade is to replace it with Bone (HB Bone Nut Blank 45 is a great fit) or Tusq one but the stock works fine and provides an acceptable string height. I case of replacing - check the string spacing - some replacement nuts have smaller string spacing and for bigger fingers, it could be ~1mm difference between clean and buzzy playing.

The tuning machines work well - I was a little surprised. They are holding the tuning fine. A bit problematic for me was the bushing that should hold the tuning machines in the place - in some places the string tension was puling the pressed-in bushing out of the holes. The bushing was a loose fit and should be seated properly before serious use.

The hardware is functional but is not that much deluxe and provides a cheaper feeling. The bridge and tailpiece are some generic parts with little burrs. Surprisingly, there is a quite unusual spacing between the posts. On my guitar, the measurements (measured from hardware) are ~72 mm for the bridge (metric standard is 74 mm) and ~80,5 mm for the tailpiece (metric standard is 82 mm). They are measurements used rarely on some guitars, but fitting replacement hardware possibly requires a search for correctly spaced parts or a few mm of filing on newer standard parts. The plastic parts (pickup rings, switch chip, jack plate, and pickguard) also feel cheaper and on my guitar, some were a tiny bit different in a color.

The inserts bridge holes are well-placed for intonation, but what disappointed me a little was, that the inserts in the body were really "inserted" and quite loose - I was able to pull them out of the body without any major effort just by my hand. I was thinking that the wood expanded due to moving to a different world region, but there were shims in the holes from the factory, so they must have been loose even in the factory. This situation is most problematic for the tailpiece because the string tension is pulling the bushing out a little bit and it could cause tuning instability. Teeth on the side of the inserts were almost flat - so maybe there was higher tolerance on some parts (a bit smaller diameter) - who knows - and I was unlucky. It is easily fixable, but good to check before serious playing.

The wiring is surprisingly fine - I have seen a lot worse in more expensive guitars. The cavity itself is not shielded, but all the wires are. It is modern-style wiring with .047uf capacitors (it provides a good sound for split humbucker and darker, but still great sound for humbucker mode), two linear push-pull pots, and two unbranded larger diameter logarithmic tone pots with values well around 500K. The switch is not Switchcraft-like, but it is working well. The Roswell LAF pickups (they supposed to be Roswell's take on PAF) are quite punchy and I like their sound even in the split mode. Wiring modified with .022uf caps and 50's style brightens the sound up and pickups come more to life.

It is quite a good guitar for the price. In my case: You can play it as is without any major changes and it will work fine. You can also upgrade a lot to improve the great core of the guitar to a superbly playing instrument and it still will cost less than half of what you are expected to pay for a similar type of guitar by a different brand (e.g. Epiphone).

A fantastic lemon drop!

The top on the guitar I received is incredible, easily up there with a high end Epiphone on looks. I was expecting to swap out the pickups for some zebra-style Slash-esque pups. But as of yet, the Roswell's have stopped me doing so. They've really surprised me, I can't quite believe this instrument cost less than £200!

stunning!

This guitar is literally stunning! at this price point i am simply baffled as to how they make such a good instrument. there are some clear minor details that Gibson would miss but this guitar is simply stunning at this price point. just google the model and watch the you tube reviews you'll see so many praising it. i got this guitar for a short term fix but i'm keeping it in my main use collection

B Stock value

Bought this guitar as I didn't have one with humbuckers and the Covid-19 thing had me bored. The overall finish was nice. I had several hours on the setup, because I enjoy the do it yourself path to satisfaction and I'm just learning how to do the setups. Neck relief was good out of the box, box was a little damaged, screws on some of the covers were a little iffy on being aligned correctly when installed possibly due to a little overagressive routing on the control cavities. The tunamatic saddles had to be reversed on the top three strings to get intonation to come in as they were ringing flat when fretted versus the harmonic and all the adjustment used up. The nut was cut nicely and the 1st string height was good. I didn't find any slots sticking when tuning.

After I got it off the bench and plugged it in, it sounded great and all controls functioned properly. When I change strings I'll dress the frets, which are very playable as is, but could use some fine polishing to clean up the note bending scratches in a couple of spots. I didn't notice any fret sprout, which is good. Overall I'm very pleased with this purchase and I'm learning to set up a guitar good enough to where its a joy to play versus a chore when they are not. So for me this is a win win endeavor.

I would recommend this as a visually appealing and nice sounding addition to anyone's collection, especially if you're on a limited budget. People say you get what you pay for. I think in this case you get more.

Great guitar!

This was my first Harley benton guitar ever.

I like te quality, sound en handeling!

Only minor thing are the tuners. But easy to swap with other pair. No big deal for me.

Great guitar

Amazing!

If your looking a LP style guitar - this one is superb. Better than Epiphone I think. And costs less too. Great build quality and tone. Neck is really nice. 5 Stars!