Harley Benton SC-Custom II Active Vintage BK

Great guitar

All around great guitar was solid.

Smashed all my expectations!!!

I have purchased several HB guitars this past year and have yet to be disappointed! Only one single slightly rough fret, and otherwise perfect!!! Intonation was spot on right out of the box!! Already excited for whatever is going to be the “next” one!!!!

This AXE will drop your Jaws

I never tried Harley Benton guitars and never expected the quality to be that perfect, compared to the price. I do recommend buying this guitar. Those Rosewell pickups scream like a siren. The guitar was light and thin I just loved it and kept playing for hours, screaming " holy shhhht" in my head.

Esp for fraction of the price

Paint work great no scratches

Fret ends not sharp filed down right

Everything fits as it should.

Tuners nice and smooth

Action after 12th a little high, on delivery easy to sort.

Sounds great, this is mod platform so pups will be changed anyway

Only real issue is the nut, looks like cheap white hard plastic, still was rough from filing.

Apart from that issue i love it.

Gorgeous Guitar

I’m pretty impressed with the quality of this Harley Benton single cutaway guitar with active pickups. I received the guitar promptly and it was extremely well packaged. I have not found any blemishes on the finish which is beautiful. I love the pin stripe binding around the body and head stock too. The guitar is also fairly heavy but is well balanced. The neck is straight with no fret sprout- the frets are polished nicely as well. The set up was fine out of the box. I did put on heavier strings so I did re-set it up again. The Grover tuners are very smooth and the guitar stays in tune well. I really like the Roswell active pickups- I thought I would swap them out for some EMG’s but will keep the stock active pickups- I have the Explorer w EMG’s and I really cannot tell a difference between the two pickups. This guitar is packed with equipment usually found in much more expensive guitars. This is my 4th Harley Benton and I’m once again blown away by the quality, craftsmanship, and playability of all my guitars. I would definitely recommend this guitar to a friend and definitely for a beginner guitarist. All I did was change strings and the stock 10’s were just fine- I just prefer heavier gauge strings since I down tune a few steps. All in all, I’m extremely satisfied with my purchase.

Great guitar

Delivery to Russia took 3 weeks, UPS works very slow in case of custom clearance(10 days).

Generally, guitar is built very good. Frets are not scratching fingers. Strings are a little bit higher at 12 fret( 2+mm). A tried to move tunomatic bridge by one screw turn, but in this case strings begun to jingle in range of 1-5 frets.

Also fretbord on 14 position is missing a piece of wood, near the inlay( don't affects sound).

To conclude: great guitar with nice specs. Similar specs of more known brands in Russia costs x2-3 higher price. Perfect guitar for start learning

In this price, Best Guitar Ever

Populer guitar producers are selling guitars very expensive price and they's guitars dont deserve their prices. But Harley Benton guitars are very customer-friend guitars. Guitar has very good workmanship.I think roswell pickups good but if you change pickups with EMG, This guitar can be god tier guitar.

The best guitar (this much) money can buy

I’ve seen all the reviews on youtube at least 3 times, and I’ve read all the forums. I’ve also seen videos of other guitars by HB with a similar finish and with similar pickups, just so i can get an idea if this guitar is worth buying (I’m on a tight budget, so every dollar makes a huge difference).

After getting my hands on this guitar, and thoroughly inspecting it, i can only see a handful of micro-imperfections that you’d only see if you were looking for them... the imperfections are related to the finish of the guitar; slight blemishes, nut is off by 1/8 of a millimeter and slightly tilted towards the neck.

The first thing i noticed: the binding is gold/yellow, even though it was advertised as Ivory, it doesn’t necessarily look bad, but it wasn’t what i was expecting. Also the binding on the neck doesn’t look “perfect” and the “gold” color seems like it was sanded off when the fretboard was being sanded.

It came set up pretty well. The tuners feel amazing, the headstock is really nice with golden inlays that look like they fit in with the theme of the guitar. The action is okay, a bit high for my taste, but it’ll do. No sharp fret ends.

Even though it seems like i mentioned a lot of downsides, and lots of negatives, i really don’t mind any of them, i wanted a guitar with 24 frets that can SHRED, and it has active pickups and grover tuners as a plus!

All in all this is a great buy, and it could end up being a future mod guitar (probably the first upgrade will be the Het set pickups).

After playing it for a few days, i can safely say this guitar is way too good to miss out on. I tried playing it clean, with crunch and distortion. The cleans are CLEAR and the crunch and distortion don’t sound too “high output” they honestly sound balanced, granted i was using a noisegate, but even without it, it sounded just fine...

I highly recommend it if you’re not willing to drop $500, but still want a guitar that’s comparable to guitars twice (if not more) as expensive...

Even if it was double the price - I'd buy it again

Don't know if I should elaborate if I simply say that this guitar is awesome. Although I switched the stock pickups with EMGs (81 and 81X) I only did it because I had the pickups already waiting for the next guitar, but the truth is that the stock pickups are already amazing! I can easily hear this on the clarity of palm mutes - they're nicely defined and retain clarity. The build quality is also impeccable.

I highly recommend it!