Harley Benton ST-25TH Firemist

I actually rate it 4.5

It's a beautiful satin gold finish, and has the most beautiful roasted flamed maple neck I've seen. The neck is thin for a Strat, think Ibanez. And it plays so nice. If you like the thick, round, bat-like neck of the standard Strat, this ain't it. This is so much nicer. The locking tuners are a nice addition and the Wilkinson vibrato stays in tune right off the bat. It seems to have linear taper pots, which I prefer, and the switch is solid. The pickups...Not great, not bad, say 3.5 out of 5. Will be replacing them. I'd be proud to put the playability of this Strat up against ANY Strat out there.

What a phenomenal instrument !

I’ve been playing guitar for 20 years, I’ve played live, recorded, and have done a couple small tours. I intend to get back into making music and gigging, as such, I like my instruments to be professional. My main guitar for heavy music is a high end schecter, and it’s beautiful. But I needed a high quality guitar for my non metal interests. And I found the HB 25th Anniversary ST, truthfully I was not expecting much from HB. Out of the box the guitar was near flawless. It is outrageously beautiful, and plays perfect. I don’t understand how HB can make such high quality instruments and sell them for so little. If I had to pick one detail that makes this guitar stand out, it’s the neck. It’s chunkier than my schecter, but in a good way, though it doesn’t quite feel like Vintage Strat. The flames maple and stainless steel frets are perfect….The one con is maybe the pickups, I’m not saying they’re bad, because I somewhat like them, but I could see why someone would want to replace them for more traditional sounding Strat pups. The stock pups are a midrange heavy, a little Hi-Fi sounding, modern take on Strat pickups. If you are on the fence about buying one of these 25th an guitars. Just do it you won’t regret it.

A 5-star strat

Having an actual Fender strat I don't even know why I bought this guitar - I guess to add one more to my collection of several Harley Bentons. And I'm not going to say the usual "at this price this guitar is ..." blah blah. It's a great strat no matter the price. Of course the cheap price means not so strict quality control - the guitar I received had sharp fret edges - not just on a couple but on all the frets (could be due to wood shrinking caused by climate conditions). Not difficult to fix, you just need a small file and a lot of patience, so I'm not going to give lower rating because of this. The color is not really gold but rather copper - not my favourite color but the body finish feels really nice to the touch, not glossy but more matte. The roasted neck is excellent, make sure you lube the fretboard with your favourite lubricant. The single coil pickups sound good to me - on my Fender strat I have Seymour Duncans so I will not compare them 1:1 but with tweaking the EQ on your amp/sim/DAW I think you can get pretty much any strat tone that you need. They are about as noisy as any single coils so no surprise there. The bridge pickup is a rails humbucker which is not bad either, makes the guitar more versatile if you need to take only one guitar to a gig (unless you're a heavy metal guy but then I guess you won't be looking at a strat). The gig bag is also nicer than other cheap gig bags, has a neck pad/strap.

Sounds good, looks great

I am a beginner but this is my second strat style guitar, the first being a Yamaha Pacifica 012.

The HB has a great and unique color combination. The pickups are satisfactory. The roasted maple neck feels comfortable. Great guitar for the price!!

Feature-packed anniversary guitar almost perfect

I've been playing this guitar for a little over a month now and I have to say for the money I've spent on the guitar it plays and sounds unbelievably good. After a little bit of waiting for the guitar to arrive (month and a half) my first impressions were excellent, the setup was fine, the guitar was very comfortable, the neck and finish were beautifully done (roasted maple neck and the awesome firemist finish which definitely looks better in person). I had two minor problems at the start, the first one being the tremolo bar which was pretty hard to pop into the bridge hole (a fair amount of force was needed, despite me being scared of breaking it I managed to do it). The second problem/annoyance was the plastic protective foil (for some reason a double foil was applied), which was pretty hard to remove from the guitar, as is the case with many strat-style guitars (you need to remove the knobs).

As for the sound, I am REALLY impressed with the pickups, the neck and middle singlecoils sound very nice, but I am most impressed with the hot rail style humbucker in the bridge position, it kicks really hard (and also has a coil split mode).

Everything mentioned so far indicates that this guitar is definitely a steal for the price (oh and yeah, did I mention it has locking tuners?), which I certainly have to confirm, but I am sorry to say I had one major problem with the guitar - its tremolo system has very bad tuning stability (regardless of no usage of the tremolo bar). I've spent an additional 50 euro for a professional luthier to fix it, which he managed to do partially, but still, now in rehearsals I don't have to tune between each song, but between every two songs. It seems like eventually the only solution is to block off the bridge to turn it into a hardtail. Don't know if this is a problem with that bridge in general or if it's a QC issue, but yeah...

To conclude, if it wasn't for the problematic bridge, I would certainly say that this has to be the perfect guitar to get. If you're on the verge of buying this guitar, definitely go for it (while you still can, as it is limited edition, until the end of the year I believe).

Pros:

- nice "exotic" firemist finish

- very comfortable to play and beautiful roasted maple neck

- very solid sound, awesome hot rail humbucker

- locking tuners

- very good price point (Harley Bentons are known for it, but this is outrageously good)

Cons:

- bad tuning stability - garbage tremolo system

- annoying (double) protective foil

- waiting times for the 25th anniversary models

A real great, quality Stratocaster

Great neck, great build quality, great Strat sound. A real quality guitar. I would like to see an equivalent with maple fingerboard . Just a personal preference.

Love the ST-25th

Got it setup to my specs and it plays great

Blown away

Blown away by the neck on this, it looks stunning with the flamed maple, and plays amazing. I really can't believe it, considering I own a Fender Strat that cost almost 4 times this. Only negatives for me were the frets arrived a bit scratchy and the pickups look odd being bright white against the pick guard but hardly deal breakers as the frets were fine after a little play and when the strings are dead I can polish them.

I absolutely don't need more guitars but very tempted to get another anniversary model if the rest are like this.

It needed very little setup, relief was off a little and lowered the action a bit. Very very impressed.

Great guitar, insane value for the price just buy one

Fretboard and baked maple neck exuisid, top notch, better than my 2000$ les Paul. No string buzz.. wouldn't stay in tune when i got it tho because the strings were too big for the nut, but when i went from original strings 46-10(i think) -8,5 and set it up with adjusting the thrus rod, put nut sauce oil/grease in nut and under the two things that keep the strings down on the head stock, stretched the strings and go up and down on the tremolo tune it again again and again stretch them really good.. it stays in tune perfectly and i can abuse the wammy with out troubles(big thumbs up) Pick ups are accually really good. Only thing i can complain about is that there is this shhch shrrch sound when i use the wammy espesally. Probably goes away if i change the wiering and pickups, might be the grounding idk. Half n hour after i wrote this i had to rewrite the review. The reason why the wammy was making this crackling noices, I googled it.. no answer there.. but i found out it was the little screw that makes the wammy loose or not, it was like right in between loose and tight and I guess i was not well grounded but close enough for electricity to go between the two parts of metall. If u have this crackling noice issue just tighten or loosen that little wammy umbrako screw. Now the pick ups sound way better too. 5/5 and that's an understatement when u look at the price(offcourse you can get some high end better sounding pick ups.. but those will cost as much as this guitar 😂 it plays better, feels better, sounds better than any squier/Fender ive ever tried. If your looking for a cheap strat, buy this one👍

Great guitar, with very gritty frets

I love this guitar. The finish looks great (although it's closer to bronze than it is gold), the flame maple neck is gorgeous, and the hotrail bridge pickup has a really aggressive bite to it. The frets were super gritty out of the box, but that was easy to fix with fret erasers. The frets are level and the action can be set pretty low.

Overall, great guitar for the money. Expect it may come with minor problems, but they are easily fixable, and once they are fixed, the guitar plays like a dream