Harley Benton ST-20 CA Standard Series 4-stars 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.

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

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.

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)

Great for the price and for the less discerning amateur player

I'm not much of a guitar player and I've never owned an expensive guitar. I needed an inexpensive one for some projects and this did the job perfectly well. The strings that came with it aren't very good though, so I recommend upgrading those immediately. But everything seems to work as it should. Seems to stay in tune pretty well (again, I don't have any comparison to more pricey guitars). I did adjust the intonation as it seemed slightly off. And the frets need polishing, they sound a bit scrapey. In short: excellent value for money. If you need a really inexpensive Strat-style guitar that just works, this should do fine.

What's not to like

The guitar was in good order, a dry neck , and a badly cut rear plastic trem cover, nothing major for the price, lovely candy apple paint and it is set up straight out of the box. Another great guitar for the money. It has a good sound overall, i am very happy with this guitar.