Harley Benton Slider II Vintage Series Reviews

I like it!

Its a great studio tool, very fun to play

Its pretty much perfect, with a couple of exceptions:

1. the tuners need to be put in the trash the moment you receive it. And its coming from someone who has nothing against cheap hardware. These are complete garbage for sure - very hard to use and feel like they would break in a week under this kind of stress

2. the pickup is... well its a ceramic single coil, so it sounds like one. I'm using my instrument mostly for the leads so I swapped it to a blade humbucker.

With those couple of improvements its a solid instrument. What more could you ask for at this price point?

Fun Lap Steel

I have nothing to compare this too in terms of other lap steels. I have had it for over a years now. I liked it straight away but once I changed the strings it became so much better to play. I use C6 tuning and it is a different animal to a dobro in terms of playing. I have used it in home recordings and at gigs and it works as it should. For the money and if your thinking of getting into the world of lap steel i would say go for it.

Grat first lapsteel

My first lapsteel. I am impressed with the sound and features. I think it is a great price for the quality.

Real fun to play!

Great intro to Lap Steel Guitar

Bought this for fun as I had some HB instruments so far and more or less was always satisfied with the quality and wanted an add to my guitar collection. Sound wise for sure is not as a high end products, but more then decent instrument to jump into the waters of Lap Steel techniques.

Great Lap Steel

Perfect Lap steel for any style. Sits very comfortably on the knee and sounds great .

get one

just great for the price. stays in tune forever. pick up, bridge,fretboard, intonation- everything works fine. you WILL need to change the strings asap. maybe useful for a day or two for blues in open e or g but they are tinny and far too thin and loose. needs a heavier guage. im using c6 strings for country and top string is a 15. also finger/thumb picks needed for most people. came very well packaged although plastic film covering the hardware was a real pain to remove. actually had to undo screws to get fully rid of it and there is still some stuck under knobs. tone bar and bag are cheapish but do the job. highly recommended.

Great quality for the price

I always wanted a lap steel to use on some home recordings. I bought this and I was delighted with what I got for money. The overall sound was pretty decent however I did find when tuning it to lower open tunings for slide, I had a hard time trying to keep in it tune and any pressure at all would put it out. Apart from that, the instrument is great. Great for anyone wanting to improve or learn slide guitar

Top product for low price !

Just perfect for me as a beginner in lapsteel

A great first lap steel

After wanting to get into playing the instrument, I purchased this lap steel as my first. I own a few HB guitars, so I knew the quality would be very decent.

When the instrument arrived it needed some up with the saddles, I messed around with it in open Day/G for a while before I changed the strings for a C6 tuning set up.

I also changed the white plastic knobs for metal ones you'd find on a Tele, and I put a black pick up cover on.

After learning more about how it's played and how to get the sounds I wanted, I'm very happy with the sound, it has a nice time with some reverb and such.

Pros:Cheap, very good quality, tone bar comes with case.

Cons: Don't really care for how the white knobs/pickups look against the silver and black.

When wearing the case on ones back, it would feel more comfortable if the straps were longer, I'm an average height/weight and the case feels like it was meant for a small child.

Overall, I'd encourage any beginner to give this lapsteel a go.

Decent for the cheap price.

I got this as an alternative to using a slide on a normal guitar for studio work. I'm not really a steel guitar player, just a regular guitar player that does a fair bit of slide work and wanted to expand my options with a lap steel.

Pros:

Well, mostly the price to be honest. It's certainly decent value for the money and can be upgraded without too much hassle. Apart from the tuners the build quality seems pretty decent and it sounds ok. The finish is good. If the poor quality strings are replaced it can absolutely be used stock if you spend some time setting it up properly. Pots feel reasonably smooth, no crackling.

So definitely useable but in my opinion it needs a few upgrades (which will easily double/triple the cost) for any serious work. It's great that a gig bag is included, even if it's not the best quality.

Cons:

-The included accessories are mostly poor quality. The slide just felt wrong to me so I got a Shubb SP2 instead and it's a lot better. And I really mean a LOT better! Also, the slide came in a small "fake wood" box with a lid and it literally fell apart the first time I opened it. Unbelievably poor quality, I don't understand why they even bothered including it. Just more garbage for the environment. The guitar cable... well, it works but probably not for long. It's the absolutely cheapest quality imaginable. Went straight into the bin. The gig bag is by far the best and most useful of the accessories but it's still of the cheapest quality.

-The tuners are absolute rubbish. I haven't had the time to change them yet but they will have to go. For the time being I just rubbed some graphite onto the nut slots and that helped a lot with otherwise poor tuning.

-The pickup is a cheap ceramic type and it sounds like a cheap ceramic type. To be fair it's not the absolutely worst I've heard but still very thin and harsh sounding. I replaced it with a Strat-sized P90 from Pete Biltoft and it's a HUGE improvement. The standard Strat size of the pickup means there's a lot of upgrades available, which is a big plus.

-The bridge... I probably won't bother changing it but it isn't very good to be honest.

-The strings... Wow, where do they find rubbish like this! They are just unbelievably poor. I think they may be the worst guitar strings I've ever had the misfortune of testing. Not a big deal to me, I'm using open E and the stock strings were much too thin gauge for this anyway. Before I tossed them I tested them briefly with C6 and they were still rubbish.

-There was some plastic junk around the screws on the pickguard. It looked a bit like the thin plastic film that new pickguards usually come with. It looked like someone had made a poor attempt at removing it, leaving stuff around the screws. Very messy, didn't look good but at least it wasn't too hard to get rid of. Not a big deal but it says a lot about the quality control (or lack thereof).

The verdict:

Obviously the price is the main attraction of this instrument. The absolute minimum investment to make it usable is to buy some better strings and spend some time setting it up properly. Personally I've changed the pickup, pots, tone cap and all wiring too. I will probably also change the tuners. With these modifications I will have a pretty nice instrument for a fair price. But the total cost including all mods will be almost triple the cost of the stock instrument.

Still good value I think and recommended for anyone with the basic skills necessary for the upgrades. If you're not into modding I would recommend moving up to something better.

Edit: I forgot to mention that when replacing the pots with better quality ones I had to drill larger holes in the metal pickguard (a 10mm drill bit was perfect for this). The stock pots are cheap quality miniature ones and the holes are too small for quality pots (the hole for the jack input was already 10mm though).

I also forgot to mention that the bridge was so unbelievably poorly set up that the instrument is close to useless without MAJOR adjustments. The intonation was so bad that any attempt at chord playing above the 3rd fret was hopelessly out of tune. Intonating a lap steel is far more difficult than a standard guitar. I spent more than 3 hours before I was satisfied. You MUST know how to do this to make this instrument even remotely playable. The height of the bridge was also extremely poorly set up. The saddle for the 4th string was set so much lower than the others than the slide missed it completely! And some of the saddles only rested on one leg, causing lots of rattle. Out of the box it sounded more like a sitar-guitar than a lapsteel!!! I think it's safe to say that the instrument was never properly adjusted at the factory. The bridge must have just been slapped on and sent on it's way.

In total I spent about 10 hours of work and 80 euros to make it ok (not including new tuners that I will also probably install at some point).

slider

for the price its quite brilliant, my first ever slide guitar and i'm impressed!

sounds good and looks good, cannot really fault it!

used for studio work

Great value lap steel

Very impressed with the low cost and high quality of this lap steel! Tuning is 100% stable and sounds great.

Great Choice for a Beginner!

I bought this as an introduction to slide guitar. I've always been curious and didn't have much money to spend on an experiment. This got solid reviews so I thought I'd give it a try. Without having any other experience with slide guitars, I can't really compare this to others. But it has worked well for me. The hardware and electronics all seem to work fine. (One small exception is that there is sometimes a slight buzzing on the 2nd string near the nut, but since I haven't changed strings yet, maybe this is something that will go away when I do. Anyway, when it's plugged in and I'm playing it, it doesn't seem to be a big problem.) There is some hum from the single coil pickup, which is to be expected. If I ever get proficient enough to justify it, I'll probably upgrade the single coil to a single coil-sized double coil pickup to solve the hum problem. But besides the hum, the pickup sounds good enough for me. All in all, for the price, and if you're a beginner just wanting to dabble in slide, I think this is an easy choice. (And it comes with all the accessories you need to get started, which is a nice bonus.)

Good cheap instrument

This lap steel is great for someone just starting off to Learn the instrument and who doesn't want to spend a fortune and then not getting hang of it.

Has great build and quality is good, and the sound is pretty good too.

A good buy

Good lap steel!

I bought this lap steel along with other itens, because it was really cheap. Although it is cheap for its price, it is really well built. Doesn't feel cheap at all! The included tonebar was a nice bonus as well.

The black finish looks really nice, and the tuners are efficient and hold tune father well. It's relatively small, so it was easy to adapt a violin case in order to store and transport the lap steel with all its accessories.

The sound is quite clear and articulate. I wasn't expecting such a clean sound from such an Inexpensive instrument, and was quite surprised!

For this price and build quality, it's a keeper!

Not the best, but good enough!

I bought this lap steel as an alternative to having to constantly retune my Les Paul for slide playing. While it works fine with the bar provided, I did find the single coil pickup to be somewhat noisy. The only way to combat the noise was to turn the tone knob down, but unfortunately that had an adverse effect on the general sound. If it had come with a humbucking pickup rather than a single coil...? However, for the price, I can't really complain too much - it does what it says on the tin.

brilliant

an excellent base for modding

Ticks all the boxes

Bought for my wife for a birthday present (she's always wanted one). At this price level (£58 at time of purchase) you don't expect a lot, but the review were promising, so I went for it. I'm a guitar player, but know nothing about slide guitar playing. But it sounds good to me! With a bit of playing ability I think it would sound like the real thing! It's certainly not a toy, though it is great fun. The finish on it (a subtle metallic black) is flawless and the chrome bits and pieces all look good. The tuners are a bit sensitive, but once in tune it seems to stay there. So ........ looks good, sounds good (actually very good) and bargain price. Brilliant!

New experience

Great item, first time used one and it sounds great. Lovely quality and looks good. Packaging was excellent and service great. Very fast delivery with tracking updates. Would definitely buy from you again

Good Instrument at an Affordable Price

Having moved to the UK from the USA 5 years ago, I am trying to replace the collection of instruments I had to leave behind. I really didn't think I would find a lap steel that I could afford, but found the Harley Benton Slider II by searching the internet, and I am really pleased with it! Definitely would recommend.