Harley Benton SC-550 Plus EMG FTF

VFM

So beautiful beautiful guitar!!! Perfect sound , emg got unbelievable sound. Fretboard smooth , action could be set a little lower but it’s ok . The only problem is that one of the knobs was clicking and move it must restore but it is not something difficult or expensive.

Fantastic Guitar

Such a sweet guitar. EMG pickups are awesome. Can not beat the value of this guitar.

Electronic Problems

Good sound, nice guitar.

Problem with the pickup switch. Sometimes it works, most time's it does not.

Volume and Tone Knobs/Potentiometers also somewhat dodgy.

Absolute beast for a very cheap price!

I have to say, i saw the reviews and knew that it was a good guitar, but it really is amazing for such a low price! Feels and plays like a guitar in the 1000 euro range. That being said the cons are the following:

EMG's are good but not amazing, I find them eclipsed when I compare them to my other guitar with Duncan distortions

The nut was hardly cut at all, took it to a luthier a day after getting it to properly cut the nut so the strings can stay and place and hold tune.

And they guitar has 4-5 finish problems, the binding is inconsistent in a few places, and the headstock has a blemish where to nut meets the headstock.

That being said, the drawbacks in MY particular model aren't nearly enough for me to return it as a B stock, or not enjoy the sound or playability of the isntrument!

Highly recommend this if you dont wanna shell out 1300eur for a Les Paul Tribute!

Just. Wow.

I want to give just a bit of context about myself before I go into reviewing this thing. I started playing guitar around the age of 10 and played pretty much daily until I went away to college, when I sold my Fender Strat, Les Paul, and Marshall half stack for beer money. I haven' t played much in the 20 plus years since until about 2 months ago after having major knee surgery. I play anything from blues to metal and am a Les Paul guy through and through. I bought this model along with a PRS replica and have now played both considerably.

If we are doing an apples to apples comparison on a Gibson Les Paul Standard, this thing is 95% of the instrument for 10% of the cost. The craftmanship is SICK good. I am so far beyond floored that this thing costs $350. The tone is 99% of a real deal LP; to the point that it produces the famous Les Paul tones almost perfectly. Whether it be the rich, velvety robust clean blues tone of the neck pickup, or the bold, crunchy, aggressive rock/metal tone of the bridge pickup....I'm floored.

Is it a perfect replica? NO. I have found 3 main differences between this and the real thing. First off, the neck is a bit thicker than I would like and am used to from Gibson. Second, the volume and tone nobs feel cheap. Last, and most importanly, this thing is significantly lighter than the real deal. In fact, I'd say it's too light and that is the only thing I can truly find wrong about this. But at $350, who gives a rip? When I play it standing up the head tends towards even to slightly below the body. In a real deal LP, the body is so heavy that it naturally sits perfectly below the head.

When I compare this to the CST-24T (that was $100 less) that I purchased along with this model, this one wins hands down. I'm likely going to have to put as much money into that model as I did purchasing it in order to get the full potential of that instrument. This one is completely maxed out straight out of the box and I won't have to spend another penny on it.

In terms of any issues that I've had; I am not a luthier but I did a full setup on it. There is some very slight buzz once the setup was done, but it doesn't come through on an amp. I probably broke 7 strings (high E and B) stretching them when I first put a new set of strings on, but once I took a round filer to the tuners, this problem went away.

Overall, I'm floored with this. I can't give recommend this guitar enough.

A Fkin nice guitar.

Can't go wrong for the money. I'm blown away by the quality and sound. Maybe decent guitars don't need to be expensive these days?

Great guitar, bad delivery experience.

First of all, let me say, this is a great guitar! The neck is perfect, set-up good, finish nearly perfect and sound also top notch. I was a little let down by the quality of internal wiring- to be honest, the pots and switch were not soldered very well at all, but everything worked OK.

As there were a couple of other small issues with the guitar I had ordered, and a B-Stock model of the same type became available, I thought to order again. Big mistake! The B-Stock guitar arrived without the proper guitar packaging, and was unfortunately in a very bad state :( The neck was broken (really), one of the pickups was pushed in, and 3 of the strings snapped. And all that without any damaging to the box....

So, all in all, this is a good guitar, but I'm not sure I would recommend it for these unfortunate reasons. :(

Amazing

For the price os the best Les Paul tupe you came buy

Holy s**t

This guitar has exceeded my expectations by far. The quality build, the playability and incredible sound were better than everything I ever heard. I figured this was my entry into the LesPaul world, I need not go any further. This particular model is built at the factory in Indonesia, which I believe has a lot to do with why they are so good. This is the same factory known for making other great guitar's like Ibanez. I bought a fretless bass for my son that was really nice too but it was built in a different factory and you can see the quality level is not quite the same. But even still a nice bass especially for$150. Overall I would recommend HB to anyone especially the SC 550 plus

Guitar arrived and looked better and sounded great more than I had hoped amazing product and superb finish couldn't be more happy