Harley Benton ST-62MN BK Vintage Series Reviews

Great entry level guitar

Comfortable neck, holds tune surprisingly well, mediocre puck ups but you pay what you get.

Harley Benton RULES!!! Love my st 62

Today I got my FIRST Harley Benton and its JUST as fabulous as the hundreds of youtube ads tell you! Im in COMPLETE SHOCK! St62 black. So Im back on the site ordering another one right now!

Better than Squier

In my humble opinion, superior to the budget Fender Squier strats.

A quality instrument that sounds like a true clean strat should. The neck is silky, thin and came with well dressed frets... no sharp edges.

A nice paint job, stays in tune and the Roswell pickups sound great.

These are a great price... and such great quality that I bought a vintage white one too!!

Good for the price

I use this guitar for practice mostly. Never tried a Harley Benton guitar before and heard it was affordable for it's value. The guitar looks beautifull and sounds good. The only con i see is the fret buzz on the 7th fret. I had to put the strings a little to far from the neck to correct it. That impacts a little in playbility, but overall its a good sounding guitar, totally worth the money.

Nice low budget six-string

As a firs impression after observing and playing it out of the box: this is an awesome low budget instrument. No question it needs a setup before playing it regularly but I expected it after watching some videos about the series and I think it's absolutely acceptable for the price. Anyway, this guitar is beautiful, it has a superb neck (though it's question of taste of course) it's very playable and it sounds great. It is fine as it is and at the same time, I think it can be a good basis for future upgrades too.

I had some minor quality issues but they were not about the construction itself and the very helpful customer service solved the problem immediately.

Harley Benton ST-62MN BK Vintage Series

Very nice strat for it's pirce!

Total Disappiontment. Over-hyped guitar.

I nought this guitar for rehearsals and going to giotar class. Besides Harley Benton I have a wondeful Gibson SG 61' Reissue which is just a fantastic guitar. So, I have something to compare HB with.

First of all. It came with sharp edges of the frets. So it was not very comfortable to play, but after three days the frets became much worse. Not it is dangeros to play HB because you can get injured by theese frets sticking up from the sides of the fretboard.

I am not joking, Harley Benton guitar became uplayable in three days after shipping.

Another thing about the frets. They are very very harsh, so any bends cause that unplesant scrathces and the string just does not slide on the frets.

All this means that if you are not a total beginner, than after buying this guitar you must make fret grooming or even change those frets for a better ones. No one amoung youtube hypers will tell you that unpleant thuth.

Now I have to decide what to do with that guitar: sell it or spend half or even more of it's price to make it playable.

Not reccommended to buy.

nice

gave to my church which was in need.

ST-62MN BK

Great guitar! Love the fretboard radius and the setup was quite nice.

BUY it Now!

I just got my guitar today. I wasn't really expecting much. The box looked like it had been treated pretty harsh. Once I opened the inner box all was well. Out came a truly nice instrument.

I might be one lucky son of a gun, but it was nearly perfect. No blemishes on the body or neck. Switch and knobs were fine. Tuners, nut and strings all checked out. There was nothing to complain about. Nothing! How can this be? Surely the truss rod needed adjustment? Nope. The action was in the stratosphere? Nope, actually quite low. Well then the neck must be seated poorly? Tight as can be. Plugged her in and she sang a tune. A pretty one at that after a quick tuning.

I'm dumbfounded how this is possible. I love the neck on this guitar especially. Fits like a glove. How else can I say this. Take a chance. Buy it!

Sounds Great but not good with interface

So this guitar sounds wonderful almost like my fender strats, but it doesn't work with my Focusrite Interface it keeps buzzing no matter what, I had people check the Focusrite with other guitars - no problem - and then with Harley and still buzzing. Maybe there was something just wrong with the wiring of my guitar but the store people couldn't figure it out. Otherwise, I would easily take it on stage or practice!

BEGINER'S CHOICE

It sounds really nice!Maybe needs a setting and a set of new strings,but it is perfect for beginers!Nice prise!

Don`t read the headline only!

I`ll keep it simple and clear

Neck:

- Out of the box straight neck, nice action, pretty decent intonation, no sharp fret ends

- Rough frets, polished them with fret rubber and now they are smooth and shiny

- Thick neck, like really fat. Not complaining tho

- The finish on the back of the neck restricted hand movement a bit, so I sanded it down to matt with 240 sandpaper - much much better to play.

- Weird sound on D and G string from 12th fret and higher. Sounds like the notes are out of tune with itself and they die out quickly.

Hardware:

- Tuners seemed to be tight and fine, but changed them out to locking ones anyway

- Neck plate had this plastic base thing, got rid of that cuz it kills sustain (atleast so they say)

- The bridge is firmly against the body

Pickups:

- Middle pup is RWRP. So in theory the pickups are hum-canceling on postition 2 and 4.

- Sound is good, twangy and dynamic. Can`t compare with real strats, because I simply don`t know.

Electronics:

- The pots/knobs turn quite densely

- Needs to be shielded with copper tape, buzzes pretty loudly when not touching metal parts (I play with rather high gain)

- CHECK THE GROUND WIRE ON SPRING CLAW. Mine got detached because the claw is aluminium and solder won`t stick to it well. I put the wire between the coils of a bridge spring.

- Checked everything with multimeter. Everything is grounded and work as they should.

Other things:

- neck fits tight into its pocket which is nice

- the sustain is okay

- not plugged in the guitar sounds woody, and somewhat closed.

- the finish is great, pickguard edge has some uneven spots, and the finish on the edges of fretboard has been sanded off, probably in the progress of working with fret ends.

And that`s about it.

You get what you pay for

This guitar does what it says. The frets are rough and i would not trust the whammy. The components are cheap but what are you expecting at this price, But damn the guitar looks good. Great first guitar!

Excellent Guitar

This is a great guitar by any standard. It sounds great, the pickups are clear and produce a joyful noise. Construction on mine was top-notch, I couldn't find a flaw.

My only complaints are that I can't seem to find a pickguard that will line up without the need to drill new holes. Would be nice if it was more compatible with available aftermarket parts. The tuning machines are also not great, but they do the job.

One of the best stratocaster alike guitars!

I play the guitar for about 22 years. In this period I have played & tested several guitars in different price range, very cheap ones to extreme priced boutique instruments.

Though I have several guitars, I didn't have a stratocaster so I bought this one because of its low price. I was amazed.

So from my point of view it seems unbelievable that someone can buy a '60s stratocaster alike guitar at this price that plays and sounds simply awesome!

The build quality is good. No build flaws at all, very good paint and polish for the price, good quality plastic parts.

But... the neck is really really GREAT! I couldn't believe that a ¤115 guitar could have a neck & freatboard like this one! It feels like you play an original vintage fender, it feels like "cream" on my fingers!

Big plus the wilkinson pickups, they sound very good without noise and hiss.

So, if you are a beginner guitarist searching to buy your first guitar and you like Strat like types, grab this one.

If you are a more advanced guitarist who likes to have a vintage Strat sounding guitar without selling his car to pay for it, go get one.

Incredible value for money

I've had this guitar for a while now and I've got to say that it has become my main axe that I use both for live gigs and for the studio. I was always a fan of superstrats rather than normal strats because I hated the pickup hum but this guitars has totally changed my mindset. It is very versatile and it can do every kind of music frop pop to jazz to hard rock. The tremolo rarely goes out of tune and the overall quality of the components is fantastic. As for the pickups, I have used very expensive boutique pickups in the past and these are not inferion by any means. The clean tone is great with clarity and the driven tone is very punchy and it has the classic strat sound, perfect for lead and rythm. The neck feels just the right size for me, not to thin not too thick, fretwork seems fine with no edges sticking out and no imperfections. I'm really satsfied overall.

The classic vintage 'F' style at a value price!

Can not beat the price! Excellent value for the money..a great platform for doing any level of mods that you desire. I always change out the caps and pots myself but you could also switch out the tremelo block.

Wow!

Amazing guitar for such a stupid price. Perfect neck and neck joint, very tonal basswood body. I used it as a super strat plataform and it outperforms much more expensive guitars! Tuners and trem need to be upgraded.

Great guitar, Great neck, Great buy...

Just received my ST 62 and must admit I am very happy with it. It's 6th e guitar from HB and after selling my previous 4 (only for a change as they were also great guitars and not losing too much ££) I decided on the ST 62 to mod to set up as a Gilmour "black stratacaster". Change pickups to Fender fat 50s, 69 & Seymour Duncan ssl5 incl fitting a micro toggle switch to bring in the neck with the bridge, fit a black s/plate, 4 1/4" whammy and v-t knobs with green lettering' all for under £300, wow a saving of almost 2k!!!!! Also the neck colour is almost identical, so properly set up with a bone nut change and GHS Boomers I'd actually say that's a fab buy.

The overall quality and pickup sound is a an absolute pinch at less than £90, so if your reading this do not hesitate to buy, why spend daft money on anything else. Even if not a Gilmour fan you have a guitar you could mod to your desire fore little money, or simply leave as is. I'm just doing this for modding experience, now I'm actually considering another maybe in vintage white.

Admittedly you may have to set your action, change the nut and sort out the intonation, but hey, not a big deal.

Before this I bought a Dean Zelinsky Private Label at just under £300, looked fab must admit had rusty frets and just didn't feel right (only my personal opinion). I returned it same week and got this and a HB TE40 TBX Deluxe (lovely guitar) with accessories for £250...... best £250 I've spent.

Only bad point,,,,,, looking for a couple more now and my understanding wife isn't impressed.

Advice- Just buy it, thanks.

Ps, I think I have the gilmour pickups correct without checking my buy list.