Harley Benton ST-20 CA Standard Series Reviews

A perfect Guitar to get started

This is my first electric guitar and I'm satisfied with the quality=price ratio.

The guitar was perfectly handled and came without a scratch. It wasn't in tune which is understandable since you need to make some fine-tuning adjustments using the tools you got with the Guitar. You also get a cable with it which was a nice surprise. The Guitar just like the case I bought simultaneously has an intense smell of some kind of synthetic spray.

This is definitely an issue that I hope will go away with time since it is impossible to play the guitar due to the smell.

Really good beginner guitar.

This is my first guitar ever so have not anything to compare with really.

But I think its a really nice guitar. Quality feels really good and it sounds great.

Easy to tune.

Perfect for beginners.

Great for begginer and even more

Killer in this price range, even holding tuning for some time.

But there is some cons about this guitar:

-Easy to unscrew input jack

-Not so good pickups

-Short frets

My third Harley Benton.

This was the cheapest Harley Benton I have bought to date, but it still didn't dissapoint! It was breathtaking right out of the box, a stunning shade of Candy Apple Red. I did have to dress a few fret ends, but that was it, and it plays beautifully now. Just great for learning how to set up a Guitar, now I'm comfortable doing that on any guitar, I mean... for £75, it's a steal!

Stunning guitar

Harley Benton keeps amazing me! I was a little skeptic when I bought this guitar for 89 euros. I didn’t think it would be much but I wanted to play around with a guitar that has single coil pick ups so I thought what the hell… I absolutely love it! Didn’t need any adjustments whatsoever. Tune and go! Worth every single euro!

Very good for beginners.

Die ideale Gitarre für Einsteiger

Meine erste E-Gitarre. Klingt super für das Geld. Eine sehr gute Qualität. Hervorragende Verpackung und Lieferzeit nach Kasachstan.

who needs a fender

a few tweaks and it is as good as a fender at a fraction of the price

Default body, default humming p-ups, default sliightly sprouted frets, overall it's nice

It's a little bit cheaper but compatible with my TE-30 BE, absolutely nice beginner guitar

Possibly the best budget strat on the market

To start, a little back story. I've been playing guitar for about 1 year on an acoustic (Yamaha FG800M) and since the beginning, I have been really interested in getting into electric. I was doubting for a while whether I should shell out the extra cash for a Squier Classic Vibe 60s Strat, or if a cheaper alternative was gonna do it. I chose the latter option because I am not huge on cash and was willing to take a gamble quality-wise. I'm saying that because from reviews, the quality has shown to be mixed.

Now as this arrived at my door, I was pleasantly surprised right out of the gate. The guitar simply looks incredible, especially for the price. However, I did notice some problems with the cutting of the pickguard around the hole for the pickup selector switch, but that's just a minor cosmetic issue. The fret ends felt quite nice, none of them were poking out, but a tiny bit on the sharper side, that's an easy fix though. Also, I noticed that the action was a little bit high for my liking (kind of an SRV style action), but thanks to the included tools that was a really easy fix. The intonation was practically dead on, I only had to do a couple of small adjustments. And the truss rod was a little bit too tight, meaning that the neck didn't have enough relief in it, but again, a really easy thing to fix with the included tools.

I will say though that the tremolo system outright sucks, so if you're someone who uses a trem or would like to use one, this is not the guitar for you. It gets out of tune really fast, even with a lubed nut, and the springs on the back are really overtightened to the point that it's hard to loosen them with an ordinary screwdriver. Also speaking of the springs, the screws for the spring claw were screwed in at a really weird angle and I could not figure out what could've gone wrong there. With that all said though, I don't really care about the tremolo system, so for me, that doesn't knock down anything really.

Going to the sound, I found the low-end response to be a bit weird, it got really muddy really fast. That could be fixed though by lowering the side closer to you of the pickups, and when I did that, the guitar started sounding much better already. The pickups sound a bit weird and I can't put my finger on what specifically throws me off about these, but being a 4th position lover, this strat's 4th position doesn't sound like the 4th position I'm used to. Same with the 2nd position too, the in-betweens seem a bit weird. But for the price, I'm pretty sure these are not better than what Squier is putting in their Affinity series, so for 88€ at the time of writing, this thing sounds killer!

All in all, even though I'm knocking a star for each of the subcategories, I've chosen to give this guitar a 5-star overall rating, because for such a low price it can not be beaten. For guys just starting out, I highly recommend it, just beware that the quality on yours might not be as good as it was on mine.

Edit: I'm now into the 6th month of owning this guitar, and some additional issues have cropped up. For one, the switch tip is extremely loose and comes off extremely easily. I was thinking of gluing it on, but since I'm also considering replacing the pickguard on this guy with a pearloid one, this isn't an option. Also as the humidity has decreased significantly due to the winter, the guitar now shows pretty significant fret sprouting. This isn't strictly a Harley Benton issue, as this is the case with most guitars, especially budget ones. Aside from those flaws though, I'm really darn impressed and have gigged around with this guitar with nothing but compliments on its look and sound!

Great Value Strat.

You cannot beat this guitar for value. It's insane! It compares very favourably with entry level Squires at a fraction of the cost. Money well spent. I think I'll go for the Tele next.

Any good

Looks great - terrible quality control. To many bugs. Tuners, hardware, strings, frets - after replacement those things guitar is playable. After buying something we expecting 100% valuable goods but not in this case. W would rather said this is toy for children or people with knowledge how to squeeze max from some poor quality instrument.

Not Bad At All!

When this arrived I was shocked, first of all it looks really nice,, Great paint job candy apple red ,you can’t go wrong,, all I’ve done was tune it up ,the neck feels great no Burs and I didn’t even have to adjust truss rod or Intonation everything was spot on,, for cheap guitar this thing is awesome, Not bad at All!

SUPER BUDGED GUITAR

I wanted to have an electric guitar for general use. Quality and color(red) is fantastic and sure i could not find any difference comparing it with a pro guitar as i am not a pro guitarist. I have a VAMP ii and it gives me a big variety of cabinet simulations. Sounds good and warm with those funky riffs i play... also good for drive(rock, hard rock etc)

poor

the neck led after winter, the quality of the neck is rather poor, the edges of the frets are severely cut, weak sensors, I do not advise taking

the real deal

the guitar is simply stunning in the CA finish. After a quick tuning out of the box intonation was spot on, but I will probably lower the string height a bit. Guitar is quite a bit heavier(good thing) than I anticipated. For the price the pick ups sound very good through a tube amp. Could it use an upgrade on the tuners and a bigger trem block, hell yes.....but for the price you can afford to upgrade it and have an incredible guitar for under $200. I honestly don't believe one can find a better guitar for the money.

Price equals quality

It works. The main thing you need to know.

Advantages:

1) You can estimate the form factor of the stratocaster;

2) Suitable for beginners;

3) Acceptable sound and ergonomics for ridiculous money;

4) Decent build, excellent finish;

5) Looks good;

6) Price, of course!

Disadvantages:

1) Terrible tremolo. Unuseful.

2) Bad tuners and nut; for a stable tuning, you need to replace it (and also lock the tremolo);

3) No shielding and grounding (the guitar makes a lot of noise, you will have to fix it);

4) The frets are not perfectly polished;

5) Unreliable sawing of wood (defects are possible over time).

There are problems. But this is the best option for the money.

Good guitar for it's price

Been lucky to play original USA Fender Strat, several Gibson SG, and numerous Epiphones before this guitar. So will try to describe my perception of new to me brand name on example of this guitar.

Pluses of this Harley Benton ST-20 CA Standard Series guitar:

- it looks very bright and beautiful - much more attractive to my taste, than most of begginers level guitars by other manufacturers.

- head, neck, fretboard, deck - are good.

Minuses I've found:

- out of the box completely untuned and no chance any single of 6 strings will give you an octave at 12 fret;

- electronics with tone pot at maximum working like radio receiver - you can hear local radiostation weather report trough your guitar cabinet (funny fact - Harley Benton SC-450 P90 GT Classic Series tuned at the same station. So may be it's just patented, but undocumented, feature from manufacturer?).

- frets ends will bite your hand serious after few minutes of playing. Needed to be shortened for about 1-1,5 mm from both sides of the fretboard and polished after that.

Sound is good.

So my sincere recomendations to manufacturer - keep your instruments looking that good, but improove electronics and finishing of your products a bit. If you'll made this, I'll change rating to 5 stars for sure.

Great bang for buck!

It's my first electric guitar, so I really don't have anything to compare it with. That being said, given it's price, it's pretty damn good! The quality of the materials is great and it sounds good too. Only downsides for me are the jack output ( I have to use some force removing the cables I plug in) and the tuning heads that have some wiggle room (it doesn't go out of tune while playing, but compared to my acoustic guitars where the heads are always tight, I can feel the difference)

Nice guitar for the price. Well, what can I say except that for the money, you can't get any guitar better than this. I also bought a ST-62 BK but I have this guitar set up and playing already while I'm still working on the ST-62. Never expected that. I bought this guitar to mod but after setting it up I play it all the time. You have a winner here. PROS: Very Good Finish, Pickups are good for a budget guitar, Machine Heads are good as long the guitar is used as a hardtail , weight is ok. CONS: Frets are too low, Fretboard feels kind of light in my hands, but that's expected for the price.