Harley Benton ST-62CC MN Charcoal Frost Reviews

Perfect out of the box

Finish on this guitar is flawless, the woodgrain on the neck and headstock is gorgeous, action is set low and no rough frets. Looks so much nicer in person than in pictures. Pick up height was great too did not have to adjust anything. Brilliant!

Great guitar if you know how to setup a guitar

The guitar looks great and sounds nice, but the lower E saddle looks like was filed poorly (the gold finish is gone on the contact point and it's rough/scratchy) which creates friction, affecting the tuning stability, plus the pivot screw on the lower E is clearly different from the other 5.

All things considered, it's a good guitar for 150 euros if you know how to do a proper setup.

Detailed review below.

Neck:

The best part is the neck, caramelised maple (I guess it's a "light roast"), with a light satin finish. The fretboard has a similar but near the nut it felt completely unfinished. There were a couple of dents along the fretboard edges.

Some of the frets felt rough along the fretboard edges, but you wouldn't notice it if it was your first guitar.

The frets feel a bit scratchy on the strings when you bend, but it goes away with a fine fret eraser or simply with time by just playing the guitar.

The nut is probably plastic (not specified)

Body:

The body is ok, the paint job is uniform and nice. Looking at the back against some light you can see one glue line running along the body in the middle and one near the smaller horn (this one also running through the body). The front looks perfect.

Hardware:

The vintage tuners are ok as well as the string trees (fixed, not rolling)

The bridge was impressive - kept the tuning after various dive bombs on all the strings except for lower E and A - but they were detuning by half a semitone. (and can probably be fixed by working on the friction points without necessarily changing anything. The springs are a bit stiff.

The strap buttons work fine and are sturdy. The screws are fine, apart from the one on the bridge on the lower E which is clearly different from the other 5 screws. The corresponding saddle looks poorly filed and lost its gold color where it makes contact with the string.

The pickguard is slightly tilted but it doesn't affect the playability.

Neckplate looks good and also has a plastic pad underneath (i guess to improve adhesion).

The action was fine.

The intonation was slightly off but it's a quick and easy fix.

Electronics:

The pickups are actually good, the wiring is ok, the shielding is fine (missing near the pickups but doesn't seem necessary), the jack is fine and everything is grounded adequately.

The 5-way switch works fine but it's a bit too light and you can easily switch the position accidentally while playing.

The potentiometers feel scratchy, however, they don't make noise and work fine.

Summary:

The only noticeable issue was with the lower E saddle (minor functional issue) and the pivot screw (aesthetic issue).

It's not perfect, but if you have some experience you can make it a very nice guitar with a simple setup.

Great with one problem

I absolutely love this guitar, despite a fairly major problem. The finish is excellent and the feel when playing is fantastic. Somehow it's been my go-to guitar lately, even though it costs a fraction of my other guitars.

The only issue is with the bridge position. The bridge should be slightly closer to the neck. Unless I drill new holes and move the bridge, the intonation will never be entirely right. This is really unfortunate since I'll never want to take this guitar live without proper intonation. At this price point, I'm especially mad about it, but it is disappointing.

Overall, very fun guitar to play, but I'd only recommend it if my bridge position problem is unique to me.

Excellent Guitar, fits every guitarist

This is the second guitar from Harley Benton that I own. I knew that HB produce value for money guitars, but this one is really special and exceeded my expectations to be completely honest.

Overall , it's very good.

It stays in tune (even after heavy playing with tremolo).The other parts of the guitar (volume knobs, machine heads etc) feel really solid.

The pickups are ok, not something great, but they do the job.

The only thing that I dont like in this guitar is that bending the strings requires more strength than most of guitars and this could be a problem, especially for beginners.

Vale quel che costa se non di meno

La chitarra a colpo d occhio è bella, ma appena ci si avvicina, non nasconde il suo essere economico, tastiera verniciata malissimo, al tatto è completamente ruvida e questo mi scoccia molto dato che l ho comprata principalmente per il manico, l osso è addirittura verniciato sopra , verniciatura del body con molti difetti, battipenna con fori casuali che nemmeno il ricambio harley benton calza. Meccaniche lasciamo perdere, anche l estetica lascia a desiderare per via delle dorature tremende. Il suono è semidecente. Chitarra valida per fardivertire chi come me ama destreggiarsi con la liuteria, ma non la ricomprerei. Forse il modello base da meno di 100 euro avrebbe avuto più senso

Great Strat

I use this guitar every week for playing live gigs. I think that is enough.

Great guitar, just what i ordered

Beautiful sound, beautiful guitar. Really worth it’s price. It’s color is a little different than the pictures but i love it. I recommend it to anyone.

Very impressed

I've never been a fan of single-coil guitars, but I couldn't pass this one up. Beautiful guitar, no flaws that I can see. Like most single-coil guitars I noticed a hum on certain pickup settings, but it's much better than most single-coil guitars I've played in different stores. I'm happy with it as is but will research how to reduce the hum eventually.

Best Fender Stratocaster guitar

No need for details. This guitar is the best Fender Stratocaster alternative for his price.

Someone forgot to finish the fret work

Overall this is a solid stat style guitar...BUT the fret work was terrible, sharp edges down both side and several high spots.

Not the color advertised at all

First off, The guitar is good quality and I love the sound. BUT, I bought this guitar because of the color and strictly for that. To my surprise it is a dark grey, not anywhere near the green shown. Also the pickguard is noticeably mint-green, and not white as pictured. Keep this in mind when purchasing this guitar, you are not getting what is advertised. The neck feels great in my hands and the satin is smooth. I had some cuts on my hands so I had to file the frets down. I wish I got what is shown, but it is a beautiful sounding guitar, and the build is spectacular. Just not what was advertised and I think it's only fair that people know this. You will get a good sounding, good quality Dark Gray Guitar, with a green pickguard, and gold hardware.

best first guitar!

For the price is the best guitar you can get, the only thing I didn't like is that the color dosen't match the pictures, it is way more grey that what is showed!