Harley Benton TE-20MN BM Standard Series 4-stars Reviews

Good value but AGES to ship

Guitar is good but the shipping is excruciating, says 3-4 days. Complete lie, I came home every day waiting for the guitar to be there but it never was I’ll probably consider another company before ordering here again

3 of the 6 tuning pegs misaligned, came with no setup at all

As the headline says, out of the 6 tuning pegs 3, of them are misaligned. Very rookie job I must say. Two tuning keys are very close to each other because of this reason. The action was sky-high when it arrived. The guitar was just practically put together, and no setup was done. But once I've set it up properly, it's a very fun guitar to play. It holds the tuning quite well considering. The tuning pegs are not the best to say the least, but expectable for the price. I'd suggest buying a set of locking tuners with the guitar. If a beginner guitarist had bought this guitar, he'd have quit immediately because of the horrid setup. Despite the negativities, this guitar is the most fun and most inspiring to play out of all my other guitars, seriously! I absolutely love it.

Nice guitar

A nice guitar for a beginner. It works nicely and sounds fine. It obviously isn't perfect but it does the job and feels just fine to play.

Great value, much lighter and sharper blue

For a guitar at this price, it's amazingly good. Sound is better than I expected, the fretwork is flawless and the paintwork is nice. Only disapointment is that it was a different color then on the photos. In here it looks like a very nice dark, greyish blue. The guitar that came was bright light blue. But still nice color.

Great quality, low cost asset.

One of the best teles i have played. Quality of build gor the price is fantastic. Long may it go on.

Good

For beginner you can’t get any better quality for this price. Totally worth it buying this guitar and I recommend it to anyone who is just starting with electric guitars.

Came with a bent tune-knob

After a first purchase of an Harley Benton instrument, i thought i was getting the same experience... maybe i should have lessened my expectations when buying an electric guitar that costs less than a nice dinner for two...

The Tone-knob was severely bent out of shape out of the box, the metal of the inner-working is brittle and cannot be bent back into shape.. so not much can be done there.

With the electronics, there is something going on when rotating the volume knob with huge interference when switching between the extremes. This issue doesn't really occurs when playing.

Overall, this makes guitars accessible to a lot of people despite an issue or two.. overall I believe we should be grateful for this kind of access but was not as premium as one of the more expensive Harley Benton instruments

Super fast delivery, no issues

Great guitar, needs a quick action fettle and intonation, but feels and sounds good so far. Very happy.

Need to show a bit of self control due to N+1 guitar rule.

Very nice guitar. Buy one.

I'm a bass player, but I need a guitar for practising and recording. This is great for that. Everything works as it should and it sounds great. Neck smooth and comfortable. Body a nice weight - solid enough but not too heavy. It played really well straight out of the box and just needed the action lowering for my playing. The only thing wrong with it as far as I can see is the grub screws on the bridge - far too long, so it hurts your hand when playing there - I have to rest my palm behind the bridge to play there. Feels weird at first, but I'm getting used to it.

It would b 5 stars but for the screws on the bridge. But I can't see anyone producing a better tele at this price.

Go on buy it its worth it

Great guitar for less than £70.out of box it needed action adjusted n re tune but after that it sounds good.i bought this axe with intention of upgrading all hardware.but was surprised how good it was out of box,as a beginner guitarist this is great value n I can't really fault harley benton,I'm gonna upgrade stuff on mine but the body n neck is good.for a good player pick ups/sounds a bit muddy.but with a upgrade this could make a quality axe

Value for money

Well made and punching above its weight. Definitely better than the cheapest squires. Hardware is OK for what you pay and holds tuning decently. Came setup pretty well with 9's although the action was high for my taste. The pickups are bad but the build quality in general was surprisingly good. Not a single issue with frets. For a guitar below the 100 euro mark, I am very satisfied.

Great value first guitar

The quality of this guitar is great for its price.

It's a pretty basic instrument, but the sound is nice - much nicer than you'd expect.

Highly recommend for anyone wishing to learn electric guitar.

Simply best pound for £ traditional Tele

This guitars sound and quality are so good that they must be compared to guitars al least 3 times it’s expense to be a fair comparison.

Just scratch that itch!

I wanted a T-style guitar. €66.00 is a no brainer! (Something such as a decision that is very easy or obvious – Cambridge dictionary)

Although it was purchased as a curiosity I have really bonded with this guitar! So much that I am adding locking tuners and noiseless pickups to suit playing out - with the need to combat lights, hearing loops and the like. The only other thing I’ll do is reverse the control plate as I think it looks good that way!

So:

Tuners – no problems with mine (I have since changed them to HB locking tuners for their convenience and because it is a main guitar now.)

Neck – no problems at all. Fretting all okay.

Body – lovely, metallic blue finish has stunned most of my friends.

Intonation – no problems. I believe some YouTube reviewers are being overly “sensitive”, it is as good as any production guitar never mind a sub €100.00 guitar.

Pots – quiet, slightly stiff (new!) – To be honest that point wasn’t worth making, they are fine!

Pick-ups – three good sounds. Neck through a good Bassman is a real surprise, very warm. Bridge takes mild overdrive very well and I keep it in the middle position almost all the time. My one comment is that they are lower in output to all my other guitars but I am going to put some “named” hum cancelling pickups in the guitar as it is getting so much use I’m planning to gig it when things get back to normal!

Exception Value

For what you pay there simply is no beating this guitar. It's beautiful, it plays well, it sounds great. As most guitars do it will benefit from a true setup & fret polish but that's about all it needs. I have played some entry level/budget guitars and none of them touch this in terms of quality.

quality

I can't believe how good this guitar is for the price, mind you, I'm no expert. But it does exactly what I expected it to do and that's good enough for me.

unbeatable guitar for the price

switch knob felt of immediately and got lost in the wormhole with a few pick probably but oder then fret polish and string change perfectly good instrument for the price.

Overall great quality for such a good price

Great first electric guitar. Sounds are crisp and pickups work beautifully. Overall a solid guitar, slightly heavy but nothing major. 8.5/10

A budget tele that more than holds it own against those twice the price

First? The finish. Sparkly and all of the blue! Second? A bit of a hefty one, around 4kg, so you'll know it's there. Third? The pickups are more expressive than you might expect for a sub-£150 guitar. Yes, sub-£150 - not sub-£100. Whilst there were (and still are) other models that I was tempted by (I still want the TE-52, but the bank account can't allow for that) in the HB range that are objectively better, we have to look beyond the HB guitars and look at the branded ones. When we do, the virtues of the TE-20 become all that much more clear.

As I said at the beginning, the pickups are more expressive than you might think. Yes they're still no doubt the generic Chinese tele pickups in most budget teles, but these to my ears have more depth than those in other budget teles that I own or otherwise have tried. The neck pickup has more bass to it and the bridge pickup has more treble, so much so tele. Both pickups are well rounded enough that the mids are represented and neither sacrifice either end of the sound spectrum. The bridge pickup, for example, still has a very discernable - but not overwhelming and nor overly prominent - bass to it and vice-versa for the neck. Making both pickups immensely worth their while by themselves as well as together.

But don't get me wrong, these aren't the absolute bees knees best pickups in the world ever. What they do is punch above their weight and plugged into any decent amplifier and not telling anyone the price you paid for the guitar? They'll think the guitar is worth hundreds of pounds.

Before I go into the negatives, here are some more positives: the stock strings are quite good and are capable of being tuned into Open G with a capo on *without* the strings breaking. I've had the TE-20 since April 2020 and I'm still on the original strings.

The tuners are stable, the nut slots are cut just right, only some of the frets at the dusty end needed some fettling to remove the roughness but was playable. Add that when you plug in your cable, your cable is staying put. I like that.

Now here are things I don't like so much:-

I don't like not having a full ashtray bridge. Other budget brands are able to include one, but I suspect the real reason for not having one isn't so much the added few pence per guitar - it's because full ashtray bridges are a point of concern in reviews should they not be milled just right. Given how certain customers are, they might return it being the fickle beasts those customers tend to be. This is something I'll have to add in the future.

The nut isn't cut flush with the neck and I only mention this because I'm spoiled by the quality of other HB guitars I own.

In closing, what I don't like aren't deal breakers for me and shouldn't be for you. The primary aim for this guitar was to take to my community guitar group for practice to show what you can get for so little. Before the current situation, there was the possibility of gigging with it. Instead because of the current situation, I've played it at home most days. 4/5

Great modding platform

Better then an Affinity & way cheaper. Good starter guitar.