Harley Benton SC-550 II FTF 4-stars Reviews

Beautiful guitar for the price.

Upon opening the box and wrapping, the guitar looked absolutely stunning. I closely inspected the guitar, and finish wise, it was perfect. My only criticism being the flamed maple top, it was not evenly flamed, the right side was perfect, but the left side was not a good match. Another small problem (for me) being the frets, they were rather dull and not gleaming as in the promotional pictures, so they were duly polished with a fret rubber. Also, the frets were rather sharp at the ends, but a half hour with a fret file later, they were much more comfortable to handle while playing. Sound wise it was superb, on par I would say with similar guitars two to three times the price. The guitar had a reasonable 'set up', the intonation and neck straightness being good.I was surprised to see full size potentiometers for volume and tone, and the control cavity lid was foil screened, as was the pickup selector cavity lid. The PU selector itself was of a good quality. The pau ferro fretboard was bone dry and crying out for a drink, so I applied several applications of lemon oil. Needless to say I changed the strings, mainly because I only use 9-42 gauge. So to sum up, a fantastic guitar considering the price, there were a few small glitches, more annoying than being a problem. I am pleased with my new guitar.

La calidad es buena, hay un ligero ruido en la sexta cuerda, pero esto se puede arreglar.

Good value but not without issues

For the price this is a good to very good guitar. However I found that the one I bought had issues. String height is set very high even for me and I like to get my fingers under the strings to make bends. It's pretty much at the top of the bridge saddle pegs. I tried to lower this action but then found out I was getting a lot of fret buzz which was unplayable. So I am left with a pretty slow neck all in all. This is slightly frustrating as I was expecting better.

However you can't argue with the finish and the hardware nor the sound. These are all very good. The guitar is heavy and well made. It is a very heavy guitar coming from a background in strat style guitars. Unfortunately I probably won't use it as much as I would have liked because of the string height issues. Neck relief did nothing to help in the matter and neither did going for a straighter neck which only made fret buzz worse.

Edited review to give it more stars because the pickups are excellent.

Great guitar for the money

looks amazing and sounds great.