Harley Benton SC-500 BK Vintage Series Reviews

Balls beyond what you thought possible for under $150

Spec'd faithfully after the classic single cut solid body neck through classic we all know and love. Played blind by a Gibson enthusiast, it proved indiscernible from its' forebear, the humbuckers run hot and provide all that brown, fat tone you could get spending 50 times as much or more, or learn that the brand logo on the headstock doesn't do a thing for the tone...

A lot of guitar for a little money

I have always been a massive bc rich fan and currently own 8 mockingbirds plus one I built myself from scratch. I bought this guitar because I also love the les paul custom but couldn't quite stretch to the nearly £3000 for a Gibson! I was amazed at the build quality of this guitar for the money and have to say it stands up well aqainst my more expensive bc rich collection. Main downside for me was the pickups (which I kind of expected). I have since changed all of the hardware to wilkinson chrome and the pickups to wilkinson hot humbuckers, the guitar now sounds awesome in my opinion and I love it!

Great and for the price unbeatable

A good Les Paul alike with good hardware and great sound. I have a total of 4 HB Les Paul's types and cannot fault them. Fret ends on the cheaper models need tidying a bit and the 2 top of the range models quality is fantastic how they do them for the price I have no idea.

A great guitar

It sounds oh so good. and, much important, no aestethic damages have have been reported due to the shipping. Fantiastic details, all mechanics are pergectly orking.

A great guitaar!

Nice guitar overall

Strings are bad And have some stretches but it’s okay , I love it

my precious)

Hello.

Yes, this is a wonderful guitar (examples of sounds below).

Delivery to Russia is super, I was very worried that the guitar would not arrive, or it would arrive with damage (due to the war, this is not relevant now)...

I have not played for a long time, my old guitar was made from a bass guitar (cut off the neck and re-glued))

I can't professionally give a decision on the sound ... on the quality of performance - 100 out of 100 ...

special thanks (many thanks) to Svitlana Brukhlii, the manager who worked with my order.

if, in some fantastic way, I win something, transfer the winnings to support the red cross.

SORRY(

all my music is here (updated)

https://disk.yandex.ru/d/VkRRtJ2YUdlHeA

Everything you want in a Mod platform

This guitar punch way above its weight. The sound and tone and feel of the guitar is very good once you set it up. I modified it with bigsby B500 ..Guitar Heads alnico Supreme...and Gibson spec wiring, cts pots..and switch craft toggle...love it

Good for a first guitar!

Bought this guitar as my first. Upon receipt, the toggle switch for switching the pickups was slightly damaged, but this did not affect the operation. When I first started playing, I noticed that the frets were ringing. I think over time it will stop. For a first guitar, this is a good choice, both in looks and sound. In general, I advise beginners to buy!

Perfect for the price

I bought the Harley Benton SC-500 BK because i wanted to try out a single cut guitar. The guitar is amazing!

Pros:

Fretboard is smooth without sharp edges

Stays in tune

Pots are smooth and response very well

Pickups sound very well

The finish is excellent

Low price

Cons:

The strings are cheap but playable. Although i recommend to change them

The 3-way pickup toggle switch is a little bit cheap but works perfectly

Conclution:

A gorgeous guitar. If you are a begginer or you want to try out a single cut guitar i 100% recommend it

Just amazing

I'm really amazed by playing this guitar, the pickups sound very well, i have like 8 years playing guitar and i really feel really comfortable with this particular guitar.

I actually had to make some adjustments to the instrument like wax potting the pickups and shielding the guitar but i actually like to do stuff like that so it wasn't a problem for me but if you only like to plug and play you maybe gonna have to send the guitar to a luthier, but don't worry, after a little adjustments the guitar it's gonna be very good

Looks good on the outside

The finishing of this Les Paul lookalike is very nice and it looks good.

The pickguard has a bit chap feel to it and you might want to replace it at some point.

I had a problem with the neck pickup not working at all after about a week or so. I popped open the hats and dove into the wiring to see if there was something wrong. I ended up resoldering nearly all the connections, since they were done really poorly. The culprit for the silent neck pickup turned out to be the volume pot, which was not working. I managed to fix it by spraying some electrical contact cleaner to the inside and cleaning the pot. I may have to replace it in the future.

Other than that, the guitar has a very nice feel to it and sounds now nice.

Can't go wrong for the price

A nice sounding LP style guitar for the money you really can't go wrong.

Great guitar.

Amazing workmanship. Gorgeous view. Good sound.

One of the best

This is one of the best single cut guitars that i played. For the price that is, the sound is great, there are no traces of poor performance. I definitely recommend buying it. The only downside in my case was the delivery as it was ordered before the Christmas holidays and there was a slight delay, but after I opened it I quickly forgot about this delay.

Great

Super guitar for blues haha. Stays tuned for a long time, i have not found any mistakes in manufacture. Great guitar and for such cheap price! great great great!

SC-500

Very nice guitar overall!

pros:

Nice setup

good tuning stability

nice frets

cons:

very bad pickups

very nice guitar, if you plan on using it with distortion (like everyone else) i would recomend swapping the pick ups, because their microphonic.

Great Mod Platform

This is basically the ideal modding platform. Upon arrival it was mostly in tune, with decent stability, reasonable pickups and a fantastic neck. Truly it was a joy to play. However, after only a week or two the bridge pickup failed completely and the neck pickup was a bit patchy. Luckily I already had it booked in for modding. Now with a set of tonemaster pickups and new electronics, it is an awesome guitar. I highly recommend it, I use mine for everything from John Mayer and Nick Drake to Ghost and Black Sabbath.

Absolutely love this guitar looks great sounds great.

beautiful instrument

beautiful instrument nicely put togethr, bought as b stock but only a very small defect on one fret , easily repaired, feel the pickups need upgradingto to get the most out of it but for the price outstand piece of kit, very pleased with it

fantastic beginner guitar

I'm a beginner and only started playing a few months ago. I owned 2 acoustics prior to buying this guitar and wanted to give electric a go without spending too much money.

Here are my pros and cons (from a beginners perspective)

Pros:

Looks

The guitar is absolutely gorgeous and that seems to be a common theme with all Harley Benton guitars. the finish on the guitar is truly flawless. no nicks, no uneven texture anywhere. The inlays (while likely plastic, couldn't find any info) look like genuine mother of pearl inlays and really catch the eye, especially the headstock decal which has a lovely rainbow pattern to it on my model which adds a lot of character. The gold hardware on this model isn't painted, its plated in something (couldn't say what, not gold). Aesthetically the guitar really works for me and seriously looks like a guitar that's 4x what this guitar costs.

Price:

The price is a very obvious pro as these guitars are pretty much bottom of the line as far as price goes especially if you want a Les paul/single cut style. the other option in this price range is something like the Epiphone SL, and personally I think that guitars finish and look is just not comparable. an Epiphone is a budget guitar and you can tell but this one looks very premium. It also has very small details which they could have easily skipped, such as the binding being triple ply, the attention to detail is phenomenal.

Quality control

My guitar came with a sticker on the headstock showing it had been individually quality control checked as well as a card (i dont remember where it could have been on the stock tag) stating the name of the person who checked it. This level of quality control is unheard of in guitars this price range. hell, even in guitars that are 4x more expensive than this you rarely get quality control that's as strict as Harley Benton is

Playability:

As I stated, I'm a beginner, so I cant really speak to its performance against much more expensive models like Gibson's etc. As I haven't played one. I can however talk to its performance VS a cheap strat clone as my sister owns one I had a chance to play. the Harley Benton is worlds above that specific guitar. The neck on this guitar fits my hand wonderfully.

Fit and finish:

This guitar is wonderfully put together. the neck is a set neck and the base is wonderfully rounder so you can get to high frets comfortably. speaking of frets, this guitar has some really good fret work to it. each fret is polished fantastically and there is no "dragging" or scratching noises when I'm doing bends or anything similar, there doesn't seem to be any high points and if they are they are unnoticeable. this may be my specific version only but I'm impressed.

Hardware

im a beginner so i don't know the difference really between types of pickups, bridges etc. from over reviews I've seen that the pickups leave something to be desired. however from my perspective it plays fantastically. im sure really expensive pickups would improve the sound but to my ears the guitar sounds beautiful without doing anything to it, so i see no reason to change the pickups.

Cons:

Strings

The strings are very cheap but surprisingly playable. id barely call this a con to be honest as the strings are replicable. you can get top of the line strings for less than £10 so again. This is not a critique. hell it could have come without strings all together and I still wouldn't take overall points off for that.

Weight

mines a little on the heavy side (around 5 or so kg) but then again I'm used to acoustics and I've never had another les Paul style to compare it to, that weight may be normal.

Conclusion

If this is your first electric I can absolutely 100% recommend it. If you already have a few guitars you may be better off getting one of Harley Benton's more premium models. but over all this guitar is a 10/10 for quality especially in the price range, I cant really find anything bad to say about it.