Harley Benton ST-20HSS SBK Standard Series Reviews

It's great!

I was impressed by this! Guitar sounds and feels very good!

Very great for beginners or for little jams.

Impressive piece for the cost

I'm certainly not a guitar expert, when I saw this model for the first time online I instantly had to have a closer look. Upon watching a few too many unboxing videos and videos of the guitar in action. I decided to bite the bullet and buy this as my first ever electric guitar.

I love the look of this guitar, it's absolutely my style and Harley Benton written on the headstock makes it seem less beginner-ish to the untrained eye. Rather than blowing over a grand on a big name for my first guitar.

I ordered full well knowing it would be a while to arrive, as it was a back order.

It finally arrived today, I noticed the box had taken some damage in shipping although thankfully it was just an outer layer.

The guitar itself, was checked and signed off as part of the QC process, both in the warehouse and by the manufacturer, so the process was obviously pretty stringent.

I inspected the guitar, upon opening to find perfect paintwork, no sharp frets and surprisingly shipped with strings already fitted.

I tuned up to test it and I was actually very impressed with the sound, the setup felt pretty good too.

Although I will let my guitar tech friend take a look at it to check all is well in due course when we do some sessions on the basics of playing.

I restrung with his help and recommendation too.

I get a feeling I am going to enjoy learning to play with this guitar.

Overall, I am very very impressed with the quality of this guitar, it feels and looks like an item that should cost twice as much as it does.

It makes a great beginner guitar or even a good backup for a professional, given some love and setting up.

TRUE Strat sound!

this guitar honestly astonishes me. I have several real stratocasters, and this sounds as good or better than most of those. The only gripe I have is that the fretboard is a tad bit dry, but I will oil it up and likely should solve the issue. The pickups are amazing, and the guitar was even perfectly set up - right out of the box!

Wow....all this for only 89 Euro.

I got this guitar simply because it looked cool with the satin black finish and the absolute steal price of 89 Euro. I got far more than I paid for. The guitar plays great, the pickups are good and the fretwork is awesome...even for a guitar costing 3 - 4 times as much.

I am completely shocked at how good this guitar was "out of the box" and I am 100% convinced I'll never find a better guitar at this price...ever.

Great value

As a beginner, this guitar has been a blast to pick up and practice almost daily.

I bought the kit with the amp, and it has been a great experience so far, really recommended for beginners.

So good

This was my one of my better pickups, this guitar is so good and it's really remarkable for how low its price is.

Highly recommended.

Nice all rounder

This is a really good guitar for beginners and intermidiate guitarists. Comes shipped in perfect condition. no rough edges or damage to the body. The only thing it needed was the string lowering which is very easy to do and the tools are provided to do this. There was a lil bit of the ribbon showing round the bottom 2 pickups. But they where easy tucked away. Its a nice light guitar as wel. Im happy to have purchased this. My name is Michael, i have been playing guitar for over 20 years and this is my newest perchace in nearly 10 years. very happy

Very good guitar. I really like it

She is wonderful.

Several months have passed since the purchase of this guitar and I can say that I am not disappointed. A very beautiful, pleasant and good sounding guitar. An ideal choice for a beginner or someone on a budget. The only thing that confuses me is that the guitar gets very dirty. I always wash my hand before picking up the instrument, but sometimes it doesn't help. The most important thing is that it fully fulfills its functions, attracts attention with its external and technical parameters, and was delivered to Russia safe and sound. Thanks!

Really good and cheap

+ good pickups

+ looks nice

+ price 70 €

+ quality

-dry fretboard

It's actually nice guitar for 70 €.

Nice guitar

It is good. Not just for the price - just good.

pros:

beautiful finish

overall aestetics, well constructed, no major flawes

sound is quite good, humbucker is hot

cons:

-one tuner is a bit strange, but nothing crucial. It was loosing tune for some reason, but after several tunes it stopped.

-finish is fragile, be carefull fith your guitar. I have already scratched it a bit on the back side.

Nice Guitar

Nice guitar for beginner, will change the tuners to locking style, replace the Pick ups with 59 and ready for jamming , The flat black paint is sensitive to showing wear. enjoy

A stratocaster on a budget

Obiously you shouldn't go into this purchase thinking you're ending up with a top-of-the-line product that could compete with an actual Fender Stratocaster, however, for less than 1/10 of the price of one, it is an amazing guitar.

Right out of the box, the guitar is perfectly set up. No sharp frets, straight neck, no paint-job fails - flawless QC.

The sound is OK. With a certain amount of messing around with amp settings, EQ, and such, it can sound pretty good. I found the guitar tends to do better with clean tones, rather than distorted ones. The one thing I dislike about the sound is that there is just too much treble (on the humbucker too) which can make dialing in tones a pain.

Hardware-wise it's ok, nothing spectacular. The tuners hold the guitar in tune better than I expected, however, they aren't the most pleasant to tune with. The pickups are cheap, but get the job done. In addition, while I like that there is a whammy bar bundled with the guitar, using it is another matter. If used to achieve slight vibrato, it's fine but will eventually detune the guitar. Don't expect to be doing any dive bombs with it tho.

Overall, it's a solid guitar and the fact it doesn't even cost 100€ is baffling. It is obviously aimed at beginners, or maybe just someone who wants a wall decoration, so if studio work is what you need it for, you should probably look elsewhere.

Mindblowing guitar for it's price

Ordered it with low expectations. When it arrived I noticed it sounds super cool even when not plugged in, much louder than any of my other guitars and a nice metallic sound. Not sure if this is because of the string type or the tension springs, I tried dampening those though but it still sounds neat.

It needed a bit of setup since strings were buzzing a little but as a complete beginner to setups I believe I fixed it quite easily by adjusting the rod. Now it's my favorite guitar, so much fun to play! The neck is super smooth and feels amazing to hold. Doing bends is not great though, believe the frets need to be polished.

Overall the highest value for your money I can imagine when it comes to a guitar and it looks amazing as well.

Great Looking and sounding ST-20HSS SBK

This Guitar is a great value , It looks just as impressive in person , for all real GTR players who know how to set up their Guitars the way they like them and love making them theirs , this ideal .. out of the box their was at most two or three filing of the frets, the pickups are great sounding, i use Tens on all my GTR's so after changing strings this Guitar Shines in sound .. as a Recording Engineer and Artist .. i believe in the right hands this Guitar can compete with guitars three times the price ... I would recommend this to intermediate players and pros as well ... as a fun Axe to enjoy as is or modify .. but it is well worth having !! To Harley Benton Cheers !! Rockin Design !!!

Best cheap guitar you can find

I bought this guitar to do some work on it and maybe change some parts but the guitar quality was amazing! So I only changed Neck pickup (the previous one was also very good).

Pros:

+great quality.

+great sound.

+looks amazing.

+low price.

+good tuners.

cons:

-one strap knob was little rusty.

-fretboard was really dry (buy some lemon oil).

It was worth buying it!

Incredible crab stick

The scale was already set up. The instrument is completely ready to play. I am very satisfied. Of the minuses, I can note that the frets ring in some places and they need to be polished a little. The humbucker is not very powerful, in the future I plan to replace it with another one. Verdict: This is a very good guitar for the price. The guitar is well suited for upgrades. UPD: frets made of soft metal, short-lived, the finish is not very good, not all dots were glued

Excellent value

+ low price

+ solid construction

+ looks cool

+ HSS pickups provide versatility

- tuners feel not so great

- minor tinkering with the neck may be necessary

I bought this as my first electric guitar to teach myself how to play. Guitar was shipped as soon as it was in stock (which matched the timeline provided) and it was packaged properly to protect it form damage.

The guitar feels well made with solid construction. I had a tiny bit of a glue spill where fingerboard attaches to the neck, but carefully cleaning it up myself was no big deal and took seconds to fix. I had no sharp fret ends, but it didn't look like they were rounded at the factory, so it may differ guitar from guitar. I really, really like the matte black finish with black hardware, it looks even better in person than in pictures. Matte black is a bit of a fingerprint magnet though. It was set up pretty well and after a quick tune I was ready to play. Pickups sound nice to my ears and I had no issues with them. I don't really like how the tuners feel, some of them feel much harder to turn than the others, I will probably swap them out at some point.

Overall the guitar is an outstanding value proposition.

A triumph from Harley Benton!

I can't believe how nice this guitar is! For the price it's stunning - the matte black is so classy (IMHO) and the neck being the same colour... well, it's a thing of beauty. The only thing that I would have changed looks wise is a more red pickguard (it's more brown).

Two fret ends needed the slightest of gentle rubbing with a fret file at the fret end. 10 mins of gentle persuasion and it's perfect now. Otherwise the neck is straight and the frets are fine.

It's heavy. Perhaps I should say substantial? It plays really nicely but even if I couldn't play it I'd buy it again to hang on the wall - it's that lovely looking :-). In fact, it's so nice I've bought 4 more Harleys since!

Good base

I ordered 10 years ago a Harley Bentonguitar and recently this st-20HSS. I can notice that quality has evolved a lot. The guitar is well build, the pickups are fairly good, a good quality is that the humbucker doesn't produce any feedback on loud volumes of your amp in combination with a boost (TS for example). The neck is fairly thick and it is a 'honest'-guitar - intonation is fairly good, action is ok from the factory out. I tested the guitar with a Gallien Krueger ML250, Marshall DSL, Randall RG200, Randall RH150, Marshall 8100. The pickups are neutral sounding, it gives the best results for me with a pro co ratboost instead of a TS808 and TS9 to drive the amps gain. It sounds the best with my marshall DSL and Randall RG200. It is a decent baseguitar to mod I think, The Kramer strat of 131 Euro is slightly better (better pickups, better playability on the neck), but the Kramer HB feedbacks a lot but has more spark. I am satisfied, I see no paintjob defaults or broken parts, the weight is decent, it does not feel like for example a squier 15 years ago. Overall nice guitar for a very good price.

Great stuff

Coming back to play electric after some time;

very good in hands, very good production, fantastic strings given;

looks suberb!

decent sound, needs mini adjustments;

ready to play or to upgrade;

5/5 in its price range!