Harley Benton SC-500 BK Vintage Series Reviews

Great guit!

This Les Paul is awesome! Excellent feel in my hands, wide range of tones. Playability is excellent too. Definitely won't be my last Harley Benton.

Great guitar

Beautiful guitar, sounds great, lovely action with no fret buzz and stayin in tune quite well. The toggle switch is a little loose but all round a great guitar for the price!

Good for beginners

Bought this as my first one and I wasn't disappointed. Doesn't offer too much, but definitely a good choice for this price.

Perfekt

Quality of workmanship, at a high level,

Sounds great

Very pleased

It has a solid build and a great sound, tbh not much to compare it with, but considering that I don't gig with it and it's just for my personal entertainment I'm really pleased that I can enjoy a Les Paul type guitar at such an affordable price, I put 4 stars for the features because it doesn't have the pull out knobs.

A serious instrument

HB SC 500 BK, is my fourth LP Custom. I am 66 and have had various guitars throughout my life.

The first was Eko Kiwi Black (1973). The second one is my favorite, the Ibanez LP Black (1976) I also had (third) a Gibson LP Custom Black (1978), which I was not particularly impressed with. Very heavy, the neck tends to play and costs a lot! Now have a HB SC500BK and I can't find any significant differences except for the price. So for me this guitar is for 7 or 8 stars

Very good guitar for that price

- The guitar is used at home and at rehearsals.

pros & cons

+ Low price

+ Beautiful design, the guitar looks amazing

+ Great sound for a low price

- Large gap between strings and fretboard, needs to polish frets if you want the ideal.

- One potentiometer were not tightened

The guitar could compete with more expensive guitars after the guitar was tuned in the workshop.

Also It would be better with push pull potentiometer I think.

Pleasantly Surprised

pleasantly surprised good guitar for cheap price. one thing I can say is first and foremost put a new/good set of strings on it. I hated the strings that came with it.

Harley Benton SC-500 BK Vintage Series review

One of the best bang-for-the-buck ever.

I don't expect much with such cheap guitars, and of course this is not a gibson custom shop but for the price it's ridiculous.

Great as a backup or for somebody who wants to start play, can't recommend it enough.

good starter

got this guitar as my first starter after having tried some guitars at my local guitar store the sound of the electronics is nothing to write home about but good enough to start out with feels very comfortable to play (for a newcomer like me) I would suggest to change the strings when you get the guitar

An absolute beast!

The look of the guitar blew my mind. It's a gorgeous looking guitar.

The sound is pretty good too. It's a steal getting it for this price.

For the price a great guitar

I bought my guitar in August 2017. My idea was to use it only at home (I play professionally in restaurants and small bars, I use my American Fender Stratocaster Standart). My first impressions of the guitar were that the guitar was very good finish(only I don't like the pickguard, it's made of cheap black plastic), the sound is prety good!

Pros

-Very hot humbuckers.

-Incredible sustain(the thing that's missing my Fender)

-The pots are smooth and responsive.

-The fit and finish is remarkable.

-Weight is like Les Paul's original

Cons

-The strings that come with the guitar are of poor quality

-Gold coverage of the hardware looks a litle bit cheap.

-The pickguard has sharp edges(this is not a problem, it can be fixed even at home).

-The 3-way toggle switch is a little cheap(but works perfectly).

-Feedback at higher gain levels when I play close to my amp

My bridge breaking very often the first and second strings, so after two months I decided to replace the bridge and the pick ups

So I bought from Ebay:

Vanson Roller Saddle Bridge(gold) for Gibson Les Paul - 25 euro

Tonerider Alnico II Classic Vintage Humbuckers

-for bridge side - zebra - 58 euro

-for the neck side - GOLD - 65 euro

Total bill for upgrading - 148 euro

After I did this ... I forgot for my Fender Stratocaster

Nice guitar to start with

Bought this guitar as present for my 10 years old son. And since the he plays it all the time.

Finish is good for the price - you could see bit of glue on fretboard but nothing critical.

Also it might require bit of action height adjustment because of noticeable buzz. But this is easy solvable.

I like this guitar

man, i like these guitar. The guitar came almost perfectly setup, i just lowered the action. The frets are perfect. The finish is awesome.

The pickups are great almost better than my Gibson les Paul Burstbucker.

I like the neck but i prefer the neck of the Harley Benton SC 450 plus. I can't explain why.

For this money there is no better guitar. More, the guitar can compete with the expensive Epiphones or with the Gibson Les Paul Studio (the Harley Benton is just better).

Good guitar, bad strings

As for the guitar itself, it plays really smooth and has a good sound to it. The frets are very well done and the neck hasn't got any sharp edges, which I didn't expect from a guitar as cheap as this one.

The strings however, are quite bad. But after replacing them with a set of D'Addario's, it's just a perfectly good guitar.

The only real downside is the very cheap looking scratchplate, but I prefer to play without one, so no problem for me there.

All in all very happy with this guitar.

Great guitar for beginners

At the price the guitar is of great value. Ideal for beginners as it is not a huge investment but still a nice instrument.

You take what you buy

If you want playing guitar, practising the guitar or to start learning guitar, this is a good value for money guitar and good looking also. I bought it for my son and its sound perfect for his lessons. Sometimes i also practising too with HB and it has good feeling. it has a stoner rock desert sound. Perfect buying, fast delivery.

Really nice guitar

not the most fancy or the best quality but for the price its a great lokking and sounding guitar. i love playing it and wil defenetly recomend this to anyone that wants or needs a good guitar.

A guitar easily worth double the price

In a nutshell, this guitar is pretty fantastic. If you're thinking about getting one - just get it. You won't regret it.

Firstly, the fit and finish is great. The paintwork is immaculate, the binding looks fantastic and the whole guitar feels great in the hands. The pots are smooth, the switch feels sturdy and even the tuners are of usable quality - very impressive stuff for such a cheap guitar. The pickguard isn't all that impressive, just a single ply piece of plastic, but I'm not overly bothered by that. The pickups are average, but I wouldn't expect anything more for what I paid. They work fine, they sound okay.

For me there is one standout feature of this guitar, which is the neck heel/body joint. It's contoured, allowing far smoother and better access to the top frets. Gibsons worth many times the price of this guitar don't have this feature. I don't do much up that end of the board myself but anything I do there just feels great as I don't have a chunk of wood digging into my hand.

Bottom line is: a great beginner/mid range guitar, and a fantastic base for modifications.

Still impressed

The guitar is very solid, precise and the gold metal looks very nice. The voice can easily touch both warm and rusty tones, always with character. I could recommend to change the initial set of strings with ones of preference.