Harley Benton ST-20HSS CA Standard Series 4-stars Reviews

Really nice guitar

Got this as my first guitar and its really versatile. The quality is amazing for the price.

For the price it is more then what I've expected

cheap but well made

The sound is ok, quite good

Mostly OK

Well, for this price guitar is awesome. Sounds decent. But there are some cons: on my guitar on the 21th and 22th frets the first string produces the same sound (fret levelling needed), tremolo works, but it was so terribly bolted, ehm... spring holder is very skewed and its almost impossible to fix (replacement will be hard). All in all, again, for this price its must-buy.

Great for the price

Bought this to mod a bit. The only things I changed were the tuners (as the stock ones wernt great) for some Vanson locking tuners ,the plastic but for a graftech, and the bridge for a wilkinson with full size steel block. Cost me an extra £80. The unbranded picksups, as a beginner, sound ok to me. The red metallic finish looks great, not a blemish anywhere. The pickups are pretty high output, and with the Humbucker on the bridge you get even more output. The neck is unfinished a very smooth. Defo worth buying, even as stock, is great value for money.

everything is ok for this price, but tuners are so awful .

Please make it 10-15euro more expensive, but with normal tuners.

Bridge pickup is pretty well for this price.

Middle and neck pickups are just ok.

Solid budget guitar

This one is not bad considering the incredible price. Sounds and plays good. Looks good too, which in the end is important as nobody wants to be playing uninspiring looking guitars. Yes, intonation is not the best, but I haven't tried to block the tremolo yet which I believe influences this some bit (the tremolo obviously is not the greatest quality), but in the end this is nothing so terrible. Pickups sound decent enough for me, but don't expect much versatility in tone. The worst part of this guitar was the rough frets it comes with, but which for the price it has I can understand. You don't pay for supreme finishes ok? Take a file and polish those off like I did, and you will be good to go. Chances are this is also very volatile and depending on the batch you get the guitar from that may not be a problem (but something else may). All in all, nice guitar for the price.

Fantastic value

My only complaint is that the nut holes needed polishing as some were a bit crooked. But nothing that was not a quick fix.

Overall a superb guitar for beginners or intermediate players looking for a decent platform to experiement modding on.

EDIT: a few months later it's still a great guitar for anyone getting back into the hobby or just starting out. I did end up changing the nut and put on some locking tuners. The latter were not needed but the HB ones are a straght drop in and pretty cheap. The nut however was a huge improvement as expected.

Other than that - great value recommend it wholeheartedly.

Good for the price, get what you pay

Good tone at position 5,4,3. Very hot humbucking at position 1. Position 2 kind of covered by the humbuckers but that's okay.

The tremolo is not good and too stiff. I had to remove one spring from the back cavity so that it could be playable but this brought some tuning problems. I had to further remove a spring tree to cope with that and now it still has some tuning problems.

Come down

tone knobs don't work

Speachless

I purchased this guitar in a combo package for my youngest son to play and learn. The price was excellent for the package, so I thought it would do for the little one for a year or two.

The guitar is EXCELLENT. The build and the finish is amazing, especially for the amount of money I paid. It sounds way better than what I expected, especially after I changed the original strings (the little one broke a string within the first couple of days).

The pickups are just fine, and tremolo is excellent, not ruing the tuning, even after hours of fiddling with it. The tuners are a little on the cheap side, but once you tune the strings, they stay. No scratches, no marks, no problems whatsoever ... I recommend it for anyone who wants to learn and doesn't want to spend much. It will probably never sound like one of those expensive guitars, but it is way above decent, and can be part of any gig.

Great Guitar for such a low, low price!

The guitar is beautiful and the quality is outstanding. The tuners are a little ify, meaning you turn and it sometimes don't move for awhile. But what do we expect from a low priced guitar. It meets and exceeds my expectations.

Great guitar for the money

For the price i don't think you could get anything better than this guitar. A great guitar for a beginner to start playing on that doesnt want to go all in just yet. The finish on the body looks really nice, the candy apple red looks amazing. as for playability the guitar stays in tune surprisingly well even when using the tremolo. the fret ends were slightly sharp but not unplayable, and an easy fix with some slight sanding. There were also 3 frets that were slightly higher than the rest causing some fret buzz. After having sanded those down as well you can lower the action to about 2mm-1.75mm and have a really nice playable guitar. The pickups aren't the best but for this price point they do the job better than expected. The tone knobs arent very high quality since they dont seem to do anything as far as i can hear. But for a beginner that doesnt mind having to adjust the guitar abit and isnt sure wherther they will stick to playing it's a great buy to test the waters without spending alot.

Good for beginners or non-guitarists

I bought it for experimentation only since i'm not a guitarist at all. I found it with with a ground loop problem, i fixed it hanging a second TRS first isolating the tip and ring with a scotch tape then inserting it in the second ADC input and laying (fixing) the isolated side on a water pipe since pipes are a giant safe ground.

I Guess you can fix it with a D.I. box with a ground-lift switch or with a hum remover.

Let'talk about the sound: The picks are nothing exceptional, the second and 4th pickups are the more interesting and less noisy the other ones are good enough.

If your aim is experimentation or starting guitar studying, you want to take this.

Notwithstanding the cons i listed above, i'm quite satisfied with this guy. I don't need an incredible starting sound since i heavily process the sound.

Surprisingly good!

Sounds good, looks even better! Beautiful Candy Apple Red finish! As with most new guitars it took a little fiddling about to get it adjusted and in tune, but the pickups seems to be very nice sounding. Super value for the money!

Harley Benton ST-20HSS CA Standard Series

i'm not a big fan of single coil pickups in the bridge position, but i do like the strat shape and sound form the middle and neck pickups, so i thought i'd give this a go and see how i get on, the color is really amazing and the neck feels brilliant, no problems whatsoever