Harley Benton ST-62CC RW Inca Silver Reviews

Can't be beat for value and quality

I'm mostly a Strat player. When the ST62 came out, I was intrigued enough to buy one just to see how good they actually were. Mine arrived flawless and totally playable. No dead frets and a low action. The neck was comfortable, and though I found the frets a little smaller than I'm used to (I favour higher frets), I still found this very playable. (Similar height to most Fender guitars ... not small like cheap copies). The Roswell pickups performed well, although a little weak in the output department. I also changed the scratchplate because I hated the white single ply, which was factory standard. The big downer was the tremelo unit. Whilst it stayed in tune, the saddles were very poor, and the arm rattled a lot. It's not something that can be swapped out easily (as I found out). The trem block is very thin, and a thicker block just doesn't fit the cavity. ... so the only options are either to replace the saddles or get the router out and remove some wood from the rear cavity to fit a new trem unit. I tried both, but the sound didn't really improve. The finish, though, is stunning, and the build quality and factory setup is fantastic. You won't find better for the money.

Surprisingly Good Strat-Style Guitar

Body: feels light to hold, paint is flawless with no scratches and is an amazing warm silver colour that has vintage vibes. The cavities for hardware are well routed some effort to clean up. 4.5/5

Neck: out of the factory the frets look good, no dings or scratches, and no sharp edges at the ends. Feels good to play, but needs a polish. Fretboard looked a bit dry and in need of oil, but not overly so. Neck relief needed only very minor truss rod adjustment. String action at the bridge a bit on the high side but still playable, saddles were not set very well and needed adjusting to match fretboard curvature. The intonation was way off and needed to be re-done. Overall the fretwork is better than you’d expect, and the fretboard looks good and feels good in the hand, and after setting up the action it plays really well. 4.5/5

Hardware: the bridge was set flat, but after adjusting the string tension to float it, the tuning stability is surprisingly good. The stock pickups are surprisingly good, and were set about the right height, the electronics are neatly done and grounded correctly, no excessive hum or crackling when using the switch or pots. The tuners are basic, but the factory installed strings were done well with minimal winds and the strings trimmed. The hardware is basic, but installed well and perfectly playable. 3.5/5

Overall I am very impressed with this guitar. It looks great, sounds good enough, and after a set up it plays well. The hardware is a bit basic, but for the price that’s understandable. I would recommend this product to anyone who is a beginner starting out, or to someone looking for an inexpensive strat to mod.

Much more than just value for money !!

As a seasoned professional and owner of various hi and low price guitars (strats among others), I decided to purchase the ST 62-CC in order to use it, mainly, for my private lessons studio. The adjustment of action and intonation was easily completed in a few minutes

and the instrument was ready to play. The only problem was a small ground noise issue, which was solved easily (using my poor soldering skills 🙂). Soundwise, I was pleasantly surprised because the real classic, traditional strat vibe is there.

Highly recommended !!

Beautiful looks and sound

It takes upgrades well if you use HB pickguard.

Nice affordable ST style

I am not much of a strat guy, although I have owned a few fenders and a Squier over the years. At the time I bought this I had no Strat and thought, well why not, it is dirt cheap and I was curious. I have the Harley benton HB35+ (ES335 copy) and that I was how good that thing is. A lot of guitar for the money. I never connected with this guitar and ended up modding it a little and selling it on. Not because it was a bad guitar per sec, it is actually good for the money, but the neck thickness and shape made me not want to play it. But that is a matter of personal preference.

Pros:

- well built guitar for the price range.

- sunning finish on the body and the tinted neck

- plays well out of the box, action a bit on the high side but that was a 5 minute fix.

- electronics worked fine and the pickups are decent Alnicos, output a bit higher than I usually like, but that is subjective.

Cons

The the pick guard was horrible. Cheap, soft, single layer nylon like plastic. Just awful. Even worse is that is bulged in two places.

Thin sustain block (as expected per price)

In conclusion: Would I recommend this guitar and to whom? Yes, for beginners, this is a guitar that should be fine as an entry level instrument but also for modders.

Get yourself a nice pick guard and you have a really nice looking mod platform.

This guitar will surprise you

The caramelised maple neck looks and feels absolutely fantastic on this guitar. It’s totally worth getting just for that feature… You don’t need to upgrade the electronics by the way, but if you do, and do a proper accurate setup on it, it will be your favourite Strat I guarantee you. There were some blemishes and rough edges on the finish inside the tremolo cavity on my guitar, but that doesn’t really matter. This is just an absolute steal at this price!

Decent instrument for the price

Finish is very sleek, no blemishes or nicks in this particular guitar. Although in real life the color is quite a bit lighter than on the pictures and I think it looks way better in the pictures. Had I known this I would have probably ordered another color...

Neck is very good. Backside of the neck has really low friction and the fretboard is faultless. I wouldn't have expected this given the price. Action was set rather high out of the box, but I lowered it an acceptable height. I was actually quite surprised how low you can set the action without getting string buzz. Nut is cheap plastic but cut properly and works just fine. Tuners seem okay to me, at least they work without issues and the guitar stays in tune.

Pickguard is rough plastic and not a perfect fit as there are a few small gaps between the body and the pickguard. But the weakest point of this guitar is the bridge. The saddles and their screws are of poor quality and the block/spring mechanism is not very sturdily attached on the backside.

Pickups are not great, but not terrible either. They work just fine for rock and blues at least, but also pick up a lot of hum and static noise. One thing that is missing from the sound is good sustain. But maybe that is more related to the low quality bridge and tremolo system.

I think I will upgrade the bridge quite soon because it is clearly the weakest feature here. Maybe also the pickups at some point, but all in all it's a respectable instrument - especially given the price.

Dope

Great instrument! Equal to if not better than a squire classic vibe in my opinion.

Unbelievably Awesome!

exceeded my expectations.

color...inca silver is just...! love it.

the neck feels amazing and looks perfect (was initially set on getting a maple neck, shell pink, but love the inca !)

the sounds are awesome. Im using it with my spark or nux headphone amp. both give brilliant results.

there were a couple of dings on it, the fret board needed oiling.

The strings were rusty, but set up is amazingly done. no complaints!

changed the strings to an 8 (from a 9) and set up seems fine for these too. changed it as i have a HSS with 9's and wanted to try something different with this one.

got a graphtech nut and kluson locking tuners, but so far no need to make any mods.

Happy customer. can't wait to buy another soon !

3 months later....STILL my go to guitar. I cant help but keep picking it up every time I want to play. want to get another in pink and one in olympic white...because why not !!

A lot of bang for very little buck

I bought this guitar for a partscaster project. I had fender pickups and neck ready to go but when it arrived, it was just so good out of the box that I ended up keeping the original pickups and neck and using the fender ones for another project.

I already knew the colour was something I wanted. The Inca Silver is more a cross between Gold and Silver. It's really stunning and I just had to have it. You'll pay a lot of money for a custom job with this colour as it's so rare.

The Alnico V pickups were clear as a bell, although I did have to adjust the height a little on the pickups to balance the volume and reduce string vibration interference. But that's par for the course on all guitars.

The neck was smooth and way better than what I was expecting. No fret sprout (which I'd ready was sometimes an issue) and the frests were nice and polished (something else I'd read was an issue). I had none of these problems.

The guitar stays in tune very well, after I made some adjustments to the intonation, action and floating trem height & tension.

The only things I will do in future is replace the machines and the tremolo block. I prefer a heavier, brass block for better sustain and the tuners that are in it, I don't think will suffice for that.

I'm thinking now about getting another Harley Benton strat in Lake Placid Blue but then again, this is more than enough to keep me happy.

100%, fully recommended.

Super guitar!

That is my first electric guitar and I'm so happy I got it! Quality, awesome look and design, good sound and very comfortable to play - this is just the main part of what I would like to say about this guitar. Thank you so much for that product!

Good guitar for beginners

Overall the guitar is pretty good. There are some overtones when playing and some issues in construction. But for this price it a very good guitar.

Good strat clone

I

I don't speak English well, but I can't speak any other way. The guitar is good for the money, only the frets on the fretboard that came out slightly upset me. The sound of the pickups themselves is quite good, I don’t see any reason to replace them yet.

Good guitar for the price

Got it, inspected it, found some imperfections like under the vol/tone buttons there were three wrongfully drilled holes. One little mark in the painting but those were so small details that I don´t care.

Spent a few hours to set up the guitar, fret ends, a couple partly high frets, levelled and polished the frets, applied some lemon oil to the fretboard which seemed a little dry.

The tuners are somewhat stiff, but it may get better when applying some oil in them. No slack though. The nut is cut well, the intonation is ok, action was skyhigh but after the procedures I find the guitar to be very good for the price. I like the sounds of the Roswells, measured the ohms with a multimeter and they seemed to be between 5,60 and a little over 6 ohms.

No need to do anything radical here, I may change the bridge to a steel block one though. I enjoy the guitar now as it is, and this Inca Silver is just gorgeus, as is the darker, roasted looking neck! Good job!

Quite satisfied. It's a great guitar for the price

I am very satisfied with the guitar. I was not a Strat guy but I wanted to get my hands on a Strat type guitar and this one is great. I did some adjustment myself though (adjust the action and loosen the tremolo). This made it quite easy to play which is awesome. The neck is very comfortable to play which was a good surprise for me. Pick ups are very good and you can get that specific single coil Strat sound.

Overall very beautiful guitar. I really like the color of the neck and the headstock.

There is part of the plastic on the back of the guitar which was obviously not well polished so I have to do it myself but it is only a cosmetic issue.

I would buy it again.

Great strat!

Looks great, finish was perfect, no build errors/marks whatsoever.

Sounds good, the pups have a sweet vintage tone to them, won't replace them any time soon.

Plays well AFTER a fretjob. Sorry, but these frets came oxidated and rough af. I had to polish them well.

I upgraded the plastic nut for a Tusq nut, which was a big improvement in sustain and tuning stability.

I also replaced the bridge saddles for vintage ones. The stock ones are quite sharp with low action.

Id pay way more for this if that was the price. Good quality in general, and amazing considering the price.

Nice guitar

I bought this guitar to try out the Stratocaster shape for myself. The quality of the production pleased, the sound too. I will consider buying other models from Harley Benton!

Second ST-62 this year

I bought an ST-62CC Charcoal Frost last month (see my review of that for most of what applies here). Obviously I liked it so much I bought another one :)

I intended to fit a Hotrails to the Charcoal ST-62 as I play mainly metal, but liked the stock Roswell single coils so much that it seemed a shame to sacrifice such great clean and crunch tones to whats basically the one-trick-pony of a Hotrails guitar. So, the only thing to do was buy another ST-62 to have one of each. And, while we're at it, one in maple and one in pau ferro. All other aspects (bar the hardware colour) are identical.

The only area in which the Charcoal ST-62 fell down was the sharp fret edges, whereas in the Inca the fretwork is all good. That's probably luck of the draw with such mass-produced, minimally QC'd guitars like these. The fret tops are still scratchy (like the other one and, judging by the reviews on here, most ST-62s), but this goes away after a few hours of play.

Those vintage split tuning pegs look great but I'd get some locking pegs if I was going to take this out live. The trem, despite it being on a budget guitar and sporting the thinnest zinc block I've yet seen on any guitar, sounds excellent and works as well as any non-locking trem I've used. Comparing it to the Wilkinson unit in an older ST-70 I've had, this sounds better and has way more downward travel.

Fit and finish all as good as I've come to expect from Harley Benton. The 'Inca Silver' isn't the bright sterling silver you'd find on a Fender etc, but an almost 'old gold' greenish hue'd metallic grey. My first impression when opening the box was 'oh...' in the way you might react to an 'unexpected but not what you really wanted' Christmas present. It's grown on me, though, and looks really good on the wall-hanger next to its Charcoal Frost brother.

Chrome hardware looks great, as does the plastic stuff. I should mention how good the scratchplate and electronics are, by the way, if only because Harley Benton have really stepped up in this area lately.

So - upgrades: as the other ST-62 has me covered for basic Strat tones, I'm going to use this as my primary metal rhythm guitar for recording. It'll get a set of three rail-type humbuckers, locking tuners and roller string trees, plus some 500k pots. The chunky neck is fast with great note separation and sustain. Its not as solid sounding as the maple 'board, but probably more suitable as an 'upgrade platform'.

As before - I'd recommend these current ST-62s to anyone as they far surpass the price tag. My two have replaced guitars costing 3-5 times as much, they're that good. But.... you'll need to set it up yourself and its a roll of the dice as to whether you get one with frets that don't need additional work.

Nice Strat style guitar

Looking for a Strat style guitar that was budget friendly and found this. It is a really nice guitar for the money.

A quality guitar for a great price

This is the third HB ST style guitar I've owned.

Currently I have this Inca Silver and the DLX version with metallic pickguard and gold tuners.

So the Inca silver:

Good fretwork, not perfect-but very good, no sharpies. Frets need a polish

Finish quality is amazing, not a blemish to be seen.

Tuners are smooth and responsive.

A step up in quality from the basic ST-62 vintage series for only an extra 20 euro or so.

I'm a happy guitarist.