Harley Benton SC-450PlusLH HB Vintage Series

Nice guitar

Changed tuners... perfect after that

Beautiful Guitar, excellent for the price

As my first Les Paul-style guitar, I must say this is a winner. Only one fret is a bit rough, the pickup selector is a bit fragile and I'm always worried it might break during transport in a gig bag (I have taped the piece of styrofoam that came in the box all over so it wouldn't disintegrate and keep it in the bag to protect this piece during transport), also the numbers on the knobs seem to be backwards - could it be because it's a left-handed guitar and the factory didn't think of this?

Other than that, everything is great. Good intonation from factory, playable out of the box, I changed the strings to some better ones and it shines. Great fot jazz, rock n roll, blues, funk and that ragged Les Paul sound. I like the pickups though would probably upgrade them if I were to perform regularly with it.

What a beast! And a cheap one!

Lord! This is a awesome guitar. So cheap for what is delivered. Fret work is outstanding. Flawless and beautiful paint job. Sound almost like a 2000€ Gibson. Bet an untrained ear cannot identify the difference. Pickups sound nice.

cons: The tunners, at first hear, sound like having just open/close positions but, if you move then gently, you are going to find a thin range in the middle where it actually works. Not a big issue for me. You can change the potentiometers if you like... And come on... look at its price!

Conclusion:

Buy it! Now!

Rusty strings

Received in 4 days only a beginner but found this guitar easy to play. The only down side it came with rusty strings.

Nice guitar

Nice action good colour my number 1

Unbelievable

I can’t understand how they can sell / retail this guitar for this amount I have bought a epiphone less Paul pro and I can honestly say that this Harley Benton is a better Guitar in sound and playability (I have now ordered more guitars from them) if you are thinking of buying a new guitar the Harley Bentons or brilliant don’t think that they are inferior in any way just buy one and see

As good as any top snob guitar

What a brilliantly made guitar,solid great pickups..get one while you can

i got this for my son he is studying music

i must admit i was very supprised at the quality of this guitar

it looks fantastic and is punching way above its weight in sound looks and build quality after oiling the fret board that was dry and a set of good strings he is so happy with it and wont put it down

excellent value for money

I'm only a beginner, but this guitar has a very good action, is very playable, has a terrific sound and looks like it is really well put together. Very good value

Harley Benton SC450 lefty

I've always fancied a Les Paul but being a lefty my options were generally too expensive for me. After seeing (mainly) good reviews on HB guitars online I decided to take the plunge. I wasn't too thrilled to see that the colour options for left handlers was limited (I wanted Black or Tobacco Sunburst) but not put off enough to want to pay an extra £200 to get the colour I wanted from another brand. I was anxious as to whether I'd get a good one or one that needed a little bit of work which would have to be paid for. However, the guitar is better than I expected. I checked it over for flaws on arrival, the only thing I could really spot was a slightly darker area in the mahogany on the upper edge probably caused by the edge of a knot in the wood. You may not get this on a higher priced guitar but it doesn't bother me anyway. The guitar arrived well set up and only needed minor tweaks before playing. The stop bar was set right down close to the body, which is a common mistake with this type of guitar (of any make), it puts too much pressure down onto the bridge and increases string tension, easy to adjust with a 50p coin. It sound great, plays really well and I'm even getting used to the colour. An added bonus are the coil taps for the pickups, brilliant! The tone controls have a nice progression, rather than the on/off you sometimes get. The string height is pretty good, certainly not high, but I'd like to try it lower. On any guitar this might mean getting the frets levelled but I'm willing to get this done as I like the guitar so much. There was some slightly scratchy frets but this and the fingerboard are polishing out through use, it wasn't bad enough to warrant polishing although I might do that anyway. The only negative is that the control cavity wasn't cut quite deep enough which means that the lower tone and volume controls sit too close to the body. This is mainly a problem when using the coil tap on the bridge pickup and you have to hook a nail underneath the knob. They tried to mitigate this at the factory by not fitting a washer to the tone potentiometer. Longer shaft pots would be an easy fix, but the switched volume might not be that cheap. I'm willing to do these small jobs as overall the guitar is far, far better than you should expect for the money and basically it's a keeper. My other option was a Vintage V100 as I'm very impressed with the Strat copy I have from that make and I tried one out in the shop and liked it, but it was a bit out of my budget, however, the HB does not give much away in terms of playability and sound. Obviously the hardware might not be as good or long lasting so stuff like tuners might need replacing sooner, but they all work absolutely fine at the moment. I don't think it's unreasonable to allow for or expect these minor upgrades on such a low priced instrument and the rest of what your getting is way beyond expectations. This is a low priced instrument as apposed to "cheap", there's nothing cheap about how it plays, sounds or feels. Whether it sounds exactly like a £1400 Les Paul I don't know, but it would be unreasonable to expect this, what it does sound like is a very nice double humbucker guitar. I was expecting it to be heavier than it is from general comments you see about Les Paul's and although this is heavier than my other guitars it's not by that much and its definitely not overly heavy for the size and style. BTW: I'm not a gigging or professional musician but I have played a while (decades) and have had a number of guitars go through my hands so my comments are based on this experience. I made up my mind to try an HB after coming across John Robson's blog while looking for guitar lessons and then following up with his reviews on you tube. John gives a good unbiased account from a professional perspective and has experience of high end guitars. Cheers John!