Harley Benton TE-20HH SBK Standard Series 3-stars Reviews

Good for the price

I installed an active EMG 81 and now it sounds very good. The original pickups are almost useless. You can play it only if you are a beginner. The wood is not good and it came with a small crack on the back part of the neck.

Grounding Issues

This is a great looking guitar and feels great bit had a really loud whine when you’re playing it. I went to guitar shop and they were able to minimize the whine but it was still there. Otherwise it sounds great and shipping was fast.

A bit of a miss

I own 5 other Harley Benton guitars, and love them all. However, this one is a bit of a miss. The nut isn’t cut nearly deep enough, and the tuning heads were incredibly loose upon delivery. The high E tuner even turns backwards — clockwise as opposed to counter clockwise. Not sure what happened with this one. I’ve remedied all the issues myself, but yikes.

Decent

Minors setup issues and some microphonics . but overall for the price great for a beginner or as an option for playing with tunings etc

The guitar is good, but with some peculiarities.

My copy is good, but the delivery has damaged it and has scratches on it.

Pretty as a picture but...................

Like many others I was seduced by the look of this guitar and bought one. Yes in real life it looks great but the problem is if you want to actually play and use this guitar opposed to just hanging it on a wall this is what you should do : Needs new machine heads and new PUP's which will cost you around a 100 Euros? But don't get me wrong it's a nice guitar to play and the common problem of fret sprouts was non existent which is a miracle.

Looks can be decieving

Bought this guitar purely for the look of it, when I got it, I plugged it in and immediate buzzing! Turns out it was NOT wired correctly, has to fix that myself. QC might want to do a more thorough check on these guitars, electrics and all before they send them out! buyer beware

Looks amazing. Sounds... like a $100 guitar.

The headline says it all. It really is cool looking tho, and a great project guitar. with how much you saved on this thing, you can afford the GOOD pickups for it. DO IT!!!

Better than expected but not perfect

I owned a Harley Benton bass ten years ago. That particular model (Harley Benton HBB200BK) has since been discontinued, which is probably a good thing. That was a purchase I regretted from the beginning. It was a terrible instrument and I soon switched to Fender's Mike Dirnt bass thereafter. I'm mentioning thist just to illustrate how sceptical I was, while waiting for the guitar to be delivered. I purchased it on a whim together with another guitar, since it was so cheap and looked a bit special. I also thought it would be interesting to see, how HB quality has developed.

Well then: the quality seems indeed to have improved. Decent playability out-of-the-box. Action is a bit too high for my liking, but since I’ll probably be using this for alternate tunings, it doesn’t really matter that much. For someone purchasing his/her first guitar, this may, however, be off-putting and a possible issue. The action can probably be adjusted, but in comparison to my other guitars, this is definitely a minus, if you don’t want to tinker.

Otherwise the build quality is surprisingly good. Everything works, tuners seem OK. Frets smooth and nice. Humbucker switch a bit stiff. Of course, nothing can be said about durability at this stage. And it’s not an eyesore either, if that’s important to you.

At this price point I can recommend this instrument, but maybe not as only/first guitar.