Harley Benton SC-450Plus VB Vintage Series 4-stars Reviews

It’s good

It’s my second guitar and it’s a very good affordable guitar but you do get a little bit of fret buzz

good for your money

at the time of purchase, it was the cheapest les paul, it would be a miracle if it even looked like a musical instrument, but it is also comfortable, vintage tuners do not get upset, which I think is unique. Good tool. There are flaws in cosmetics, but for such money, it’s a sin to complain.

SC-450 plus VB

It is a beautiful-looking guitar, loved the 50 style neck, Tones, and the versatility of the option of the split coils the only reason for not giving it a 100% score because of the sharp fret ends which were a bit disappointing but overall well made good value instrument.

Great deal

Great deal for the price.

7 years later (older version)

I bought this back in 2015. I do have the older version with the Wilkinson Pickups which sound great for the price. Mine also doesn't have the push/pull. Even while my older version is less feature packed it still holds up well. Few small issues like the plastic plate around the input jack is cracked and the input jack is prone to loosening, same with the pickup switch but if that's the only issues I have from a guitar at this price 7 YEARS later, that's great.

Well set up out of the box

We’ll set up guitar, slight blemish on the neck near the headstock, otherwise nicely finished

Great bye

Very pretty Guitar /after set up and good strings it is playing great great value for the money

Great guitar for an excellent price

For the price everything about this guitar is excellent for the money except the tuners and the sound is fantastic. Buy a set of locking tuners, replace the ones that come stock first thing, do a simple setup you will have no complaints.

I have to say this guitar exceeded my expectations, had a chunky feel to it, and for the money ,excellent value , could not find any blemishes, and I did look closely . Push, Pull, single double choices work very well on humbuckers. Fairly heavy but not uncomfortable. In summery ,very pleased with purchase.

Absolutely worth the money

First of all, the reference pictures don't show how beautiful this guitar looks like in real life. Worth the money just for the looks already.

Pretty much arrived "ready to play" out of the box. Just tune up, plug it in and you will have a really nice piece to start with.

A few notes and thoughts:

Overall construction: A bit on the heavier side, but nothing too much. Everything is put together well and no obvious flaws on the paintjob or binding. The pickguard was a bit loose, but that's fixed simply by tightening the screw.

Pickups and the sound: Rosewell Alnico 5's sound great. Nothing bad about them to be honest (might replace them later on but that's a personal preference pretty much). All I had to do was adjust the pickup heights to my liking. Coil tap is a nice feature.

The neck: This is why I'm rating it only for 3* for quality. Don't get me wrong, for the money you get an absolute unit but just to be brutally honest, there are some minor issues that can be taken care of from the QC department. First of all, the frets were not polished at all - very grindy when bending the strings. This I fixed with some 0000 steel wool and general polishing. Secondly the fret ends around the 15th fret and upwards were quite sharp. Fixed by filing and sanding. It seemed like someone had already tried to file the frets around that area, as the binding on the fingerboard is a little bit damaged. Fortunately it's on the bottom side, so it doesn't bother me.

HB SC-Custom I bought a year ago had perfect frets for example. Might just have been the case of QC rushing with the guitars during the holiday season..

Tuners and tuning in general: The guitar seems to hold it's tuning quite well, tuners are tight and not slipping in any way.

Overall it's a amazingly great instrument for the price. After polishing the frets, dealing with with the sharp ends around 15'th fret and changing the strings (obvious first job for any guitar) it's something that well deserves a place in my collection. That's actually already 3'rd Harley Benton guitar for me and definitely not the last one.

Good!

I loved the sound, quality and everything else about this guitar. Definitely worth the money!

Quality starting instrument and more

Firstly, I have been using this HB guitar for quite some time now in rehearsals as it does not hurt to travel with it to different rehearsal places.

All in all, a guitar that everyone could use for either gigging or learning to play. For me, it has not been an issue at all to use as replacement guitar if my main axe fails or string breaks.

Pros - it was set up really nicely and the guitar just felt phenomenal. The coil-split function is usable and gives a true variety of tones that you can use. The finish on the guitar was great and you can't really ask for much more when it comes to guitar under 200 Euro.

Cons - there are few drawbacks that did make me sad a bit. Firstly, the issue of having to soder ground wire was making me sad but considering the travel distance, I passed it as an unfortunate circumstance. The most important thing though is the fact that the humbucker sound from the Stock Roswell pickups is very muddy, yes, you could say that being a bit muddy is a characteristic of LP Style, but for me, it just didn't feel good, especially in rhythm rock parts, details get lost.

Altogether a quality instrument to have either as your starting guitar (Beware, the neck is a true baseball bat) or as a secondary guitar for gigs.

nice!

Pretty much what I expected. one of the tuning pegs slips but i was planning on changing them anyway. My only complaint is there is some kind of filler wood where the lower body meets the neck. It does not match and looks pretty horrible. I do not see anything like it in the pictures posted. I hope I just got a bad one as I am planning on buying several more Harley Bentons

Review

The guitar itself arrived within one month. When first unboxing the guitar I looked at it and admired it of how beautiful the guitar is.

The guitar sounds great through my amp, though I can still hear hum even though this guitar has a set of humbuckers, which supposedly suppose to block the hum, but it ain't that big of an issue.

The finish looked great, though at the back of the guitar I saw some kind of a scuff mark, but it's not possible to feel, it's within the finish itself I suppose. Everything is fine with the electronics the tuners, bridge. The fretboardi s fine, saw a litte bit of white staines on it, it's not very noticeable but not sure what it is. The fretboard also has a bit of scuff marks on it. but it's find I guess.

Overall great value, the guitar sounds very good in my opinion. This guitar is especially good if you are a beginner

Impressed

I have owned a 2012 Les Paul Standard, and this guitar compares to it quite well. I dare say I like the sounds of this guitar more than the Gibson which I sold. The Harley Benton for the price can't be beat.

nt bad at all...

all i want from an instument is decent sound.....and that instrument can give me that....

the only bad thibg is that it came with roswell pickups , instead of wilkinson .......

A whole lotta bang for your buck!

As the title suggests, this guitar is absolutely phenomenal for its price.

As a guitarist with a habit of wanting many different guitars to keep a variety in my arsenal of axes, it was, and still is, a very strange experience to have this guitar, but im loving every second of it to this day.

Why? Because it is one of the ONLY guitars that wont ever leave my side if its up to me!

As the descriptions tells you, you have a lot of great features for the price. If you ever felt the need to give a cheaper brand a go, this beauty will make you regret you never did it sooner.

The pro's:

-Wilkinson vintage pickups!

-great sustain

-sturdy neck, despite the design to save wood.

-tuners dont give easily to stress, keeping the strings in tune very well

-great playability if you like a fat neck. If you always play thin necks, dont worry, you will get used to this neck fairly quick.

-did i mention Wilkinson vintage pickups?

Cons:

-perhaps the top could have been better aesthetically, but not a real con for me since it looks beautiful to me.

Conclusion: buy it!

Most underrated ever?

So I ordered this guitar out of pure curiosity and the massive amount of good reviews it has. Besides that it looks killer!

I love how thick this neck is and the full, rich and beefy sound the mahogany body gives. Honestly it can keep up with my Lee Malia signature which is my main. Still is and always will even though I've played supremes. And if this guitar doesn't come second in my list well it got to be darn close. Alright I am exaggerating a little bit, but for the price being? Nothing can beat it. I mean 160 euros for this? I've payed much more for the same quality!

So, where's the catch? Alright, I got to play around a bit and changed strings few times, drop the tuning etc etc... And here's the only mistake that bothers me. Suddenly I've got fretbuzz out of nowhere, like really bad and the thing is it's not because of the frets. How do I know that? Well, it only happened to my B string. I've figure out that my nut was cut to deep for my B string, not out of the factory but because I was tuning and detuning so much. So the nut was just poor quality but hey, spend another 10 euros more and you'll get a nut for a lifetime.

Secondly, 'cause I'm a bit perfectionist I've noticed that the middle of my flamed maple isn't the middle of my guitar. They fucked up a bit in the factory, but it's alright I can live with that. If you look closely, between the pick ups it should be fine. Once you've got past the bridge it start to take a turn which I find it funny now.

In summary:

Super great guitar for the price. Nice sound, great play ability, nice set up straight out of the box, etc... Beware that at this price point you might get into trouble with one or some of the components. Chinese factory tend to care less about perfecting the finish, but I would still recommend this to friends and family and hell even a fucking stranger.

Good Value for Money

I was not impressed with the quality of Harley Benton?s old-shape LP copy, but they seem to have learnt from the past. This is a quality guitar. The body is a two-piece mahogany with a nice flamed top. The neck looks to be three piece, but feels good in the hand. Unlike the first generation, the binding and frets are smooth, with no sharp ends, or the binding coming off. The action is low out of the box and plays well without any setting up. The sound can be a little dark, and the pickups a touch harsh. Rolling back the volume takes some of the bite off the output. Quality wise, the guitar is as good as one would expect for the money. There are some minor imperfections under the lacquer, and around the binding. The plastic feels and looks cheap. Taking the pick guard off really improves the aesthetics. The tone and volume knobs sit several millimeters above the body, which isn?t a good look, but unlike the previous generation, there?s no play, and they turn like they should.

I would recommend this guitar to people who want an introduction to LP style guitars, but don?t want to spend a lot of money.

Incredible guitar for the price!

When the new Harley Benton SC series was introduced I was a bit put off that they changed the shape of the body and the heel but now I love it! The high notes is far more accessible than it is on my L-500 that has the fat Les Paul style heel.

The finish is really god with just some minor flaws around the binding.

The threaded inserts is not counterbore into the body which I already knew before ordering so I took it with me to work where I could do a perfect counterbore which really enhanced the look. In the process I noticed that the flamed maple top seems to be a veneer glued on to the maple top but that was expected for such a low priced guitar.

The nut is some kind of delrin/nylon that is made really good. I intendet to put on a tusq nut as I did on my Harley Benton L-500 that had cheap plastic nut. I ended up putting the delrin nut back on after using the tusq nut for a few days since tuning the guitar was smoother with the delrin nut.

The neck has a really tiny twist in it which gives i a tiny bit more relief on the low E-string side but it´s so small it does not affect how it performs and it´s so small that a little fret levelling would do the trick.

The fret job seems to be really good with all the frets seated as they should.

The pickups sounds really good and warm and is great for clean to hard rock sound.