Harley Benton ST-25TH Firemist 2-stars Reviews

Great product feature-wise, but entirely unplayable

First, the good: The neck is beautiful and fits snug in the hand. Very comfortable to hold and it appears as though there has been some minor fretboard edge-rolling. The locking tuners look high-quality and the stainless steel frets are a great appointment (had I not encountered what will be discussed soon). The pickups sound fine. The finish is quite nice too. Excellent price. You won't find another guitar like this for what is being asked for.

Now, the bad: The strings above the 10th fret buzz (and a couple below) rattle like crazy. I counted up to 14 high frets when tested with my fret rocker, which explains why the amount of fret buzz and choking that this guitar gets is unbelievable. I have never experienced such negligence from Harley Benton before and am stunned how this could have ever passed quality control. I looked to see if the frets were possibly popping out of their cavity and they are all seated properly. In addition, the action is not low and the truss rod is properly tuned. The issue is clearly with the leveling of the frets, which makes it practically unplayable. I tried raising the action, but in order to adjust it to the point in which the buzz sufficiently disappears the strings are so high off the body that the instrument cannot be played in a way comfortable to the fingers. I am very disappointed with the state that this instrument arrived in. I want to love it, as I do my other Harley Benton guitars, but in it's current state and for the current price I cannot come to bring myself to give it more than 2 stars.

I ordered the TE version in the same order and have encountered no such problem with that model, so I suspect I got unlucky with the ST.