Harley Benton TE-20MN BM Standard Series Reviews

Okay and Solid

Bare bones Telecaster. I always have a soft spot for Telecasters, but won't fork out the cash for a Fender. I am happy I made my purchase, but you get what you pay for.

The build is solid. Feels like a tank. In a pinch, might use to fend off zombies. The guitar I received had a bridge that needed a lot of work, and it needed a MAJOR set up to be playable.

Sound is like a dull Telecaster. It is a basswood body. That is what basswood does. The pick ups work well, and the volume and tone pots seem better than other HB's I own.

If you are just getting started in guitar, take a stab at this before dumping lots of money on a Fender. This guitar is solid, and just okay.

A seriously GOOD guitar!

Really, I know we all think such an inexpensive guitar cannot be "that" good. We are used to brands such as PRS, ESP, etc, etc that offer excellence. I thought the same myself.

This guitar is a beast. Handles everything I threw at it, from beautiful cleans, to interesting disto. May not be your choice if you are a metal head, but it is a seriously good guitar.

I purchased it as a tool for my home studio, to record clean ambient parts on my prog metal songs. It does that, very well. And so much more. (Plus the neck is really comfortable)

Really, for the price, just give it a try, you will NOT be disappointed.

Mine came with a liiiiiiittle scratch in the back that does not bother me one bit. For the rest, top notch.

And it is really beautiful!

Fantastic beginner guitar.

This would make a fantastic first guitar. The one I received had level frets with no sharp edges. The neck feels nice and smooth with a slight satin finish. The metallic blue looks beautiful in the light much better that it looks in the pictures. The guitar feels very well made for the price and with a few little upgrades would sound just as good if not better than a guitar 4x the price (I will be swapping out the nut and changing the pickups as I want to experiment with hot rails in The bridge and neck positions with switchable series and parallel.) if you are buying this as a gift for a beginner you may want to get a pack or two of strings too as they will probably brake the high E string fairly quick.

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

love it

plays great and has very good sound very pleased. would recommend unbelievable quality for price.

Great guitar at any price.

This tele is awesome. It was setup perfectly right out of the box including intonation. The pickups are gig worthy and the neck feels perfect. I have a Squier tele which I put away after playing the TE-20.

Incredible guitar at any price!

I bought this for my studio as I was looking for a quality Tele-style guitar without breaking the bank. This was my first Harley Benton guitar and I was blown away by how good this instrument is.

The fit and finish are great. Absolutely no flaws in the body paint and the neck and fretboard are a nice smooth satin which highlights the natural grain of the maple. Frets are well dressed, no noticeable high spots and no sharp fret ends. Pots and switch are smooth, tuners and bridge are better quality than every other guitar I've bought at this price point. The pickups sound like a Tele, not much more I can say about that.

If I had to say one negative thing about this guitar, it's that the factory strings are not great, I restring every new guitar I get anyway so this isn't really a problem at all.

Overall, this has quickly become one of my new favourites in my collection.

Pros:

-great looking finish

-good quality hardware

-electronics work well (no scratchy pots etc)

-sounds like a Tele

-frets are dressed nicely

-great price

Cons:

-factory strings not great

Second impression!

Arrived on time and in perfect condition. I am past gigging so I was just interested in getting an inexpensive T-type with good reviews.

First impressions: nice appearance - like the maple neck, blue body not too sparkly. Playability - good; string action a touch higher than my Pacifica, but seems to make string bending easier. Might leave it as it is. Neck is slightly chunkier than the Pacifica ; not a problem, just commenting. Fretboard not so smooth at the edges but nothing bad. Tuners seem OK. Sound - neck pick up too soft/bassy, bridge pick up is bright and very usable. Middle position is good. I think I have reverse buyer's regret - wish I'd got a dearer one with alnico pickups. However for £87 delivered, got to be pleased with this!

Second impression: I originally reviewed this hurriedly having played it through my audio box/PC set up. I should have plugged it into my little Marshall in the first place, which showed off the pickups in their true light - and they are very good indeed. The neck position is much brighter than at first thought, the middle position is great, and the bridge pickup is brash to the point of ear-splitting - but that's why there is a tone control. (Also it depends how far I turn up the drive on the amp). I am even more pleased than before. I've added a couple of stars. Let's face it, for £87 you might expect a few imperfections, so I stand by my original comments, pickups aside, but overall, fantastic value.

Incredible value for the price

I'm amazed with this guitar. It is very well made. To me the most important aspects in a guitar are the construction of the neck and body, since everything else can be swapped, and this guitar more than delivers. The neck has a great satin finish, it feels strong, has no rough edges, great wood grain, it's straight. The body is also made perfectly.

I was skeptical of some of its other features, but I was pleasantly surprised with certain components. The tuners are pretty fine, they're firm, sensitive and have no dead spots. The neck pickup sounds very good actually, I was planning on swapping it but I ended up liking it a lot. The volume and tone knobs are sturdy, they turn smoothly and make no noise. I was not very amused with the bridge pickup, it's not bad by any means, but nothing special, deserves an upgrade, although not urgently.

Now as for the downsides, the nut is pretty bad and unfinished, it still has some pieces of loose plastic from the string cavities, the strings get stuck sometimes with strong bends causing it to go out of tune, it definitely requires filing. The pickup selector switch is extremely hard, you really have to push that thing for it to move. The saddles look very cheap, I ordered some compensated brass ones. Some frets are a little rough on the edges, and require some polishing and crowning, but nothing major, doesn't deter from great playing. The pickguard and cavities need some shielding.

Honestly, for the price of this guitar I don't mind those little issues at all, in fact, I'm the kind of guy who loves to get a guitar and upgrade it myself, and smoothing the frets and edges with a foam sanding block just takes a couple minutes. That's why I'm giving this guitar a pretty much perfect score. This guitar is in my opinion much better than any other Telecaster I tried in the $200-$400 range, it just needs a little polishing and low investment and you have a serious quality guitar for an incredibly low price, a guitar for a lifetime.

I declare this guitar the modding platform of the gods. I just wish there was a cheaper option to ship to my country, I would buy a ton more.

WORTH WAITING FOR.

Thanks to a glitch in the delivery by UPS, my item finally arrived and I have to say that it was worth the wait. The overall condition of this guitar is unbeatable given the ridiculously low price, and I have had other, more expensive ones, definitely worse than this guitar! It was bought for my home amusement and, through my practise amp, it fits the bill. I have no complaints with build, finish or setup. I have to say that this is my second Harley Benton, having previously bought a roundback classical, which again was excellent, especially when re-strung with quality strings. Back to the TE-20MN, I can't say how it would perform on-stage, but have no reason to suggest it would do any worse than most others.

Amazing guitar

This is an amazing guitar at this price point. I can not understand how they got to make this guitar for this price.

Some 'negative' things you should take into account:

Of course the electronics are nowhere near more expensive pick ups. But you could not even buy real fender tele pickups for the price of the whole guitar so...

The wood used for the neck is not A-grade wood however this does not change the fact that the neck is really well finished. The frets are also very well done and the playability is good.

It is not a traditional stringtrough body.

Overall a great guitar and even the few negatives I have are easily forgotten when compared to the price.

Cannot beat the price!

HI there!

This guitar was just to check what's going on with these new HB TE-20 guitars :) !

I am using it to for r'n'r music style. Like to pimp low priced guitars :)

PROS:

- Very nice finish

- Good sounding bridge pickup

CONS:

- Plastic nut

- Neck pickup sounds mushy

- Frets are rough - should be polished

Overall guitar is pretty damn good for the price!

I would be so happy if I had such a guitar at the beginning of the 80s when I first started to play.

What a beauty

Let’s start with the bad to get it out of the way. The frets are a little sharp on the edge so it definitely needs smoothing. The strings need to be replaced right away too.

Apart from that what a beauty. The finishing is astonishing for the price. It looks amazing. The sound is excellent. Perfect for blues. I love that guitar it is such a steal for the money. You cannot possibly be disappointed. The only down side you have to be careful with HB reviews is that once you send back a guitar you lose the right to review it so of course most reviews end up positive. I sent back a couple of guitars I did not like and could not write a review. Having said this you can buy this one without worries. Looks incredible, nice quality finish, sounds great and the price is astonishingly low, how can it be better !? I love it.

How do you get away with this at £89!?

So I treated my self to my first HB.

If you handed me this guitar and asked me to guess the price I'd have said at least £250-280

£89!! 89 POUNDS! HOW!?

I own a Fender worth over 800 and a few guitars worth over 600. and a couple floating around the 280-350 range.

I am absolutely gobsmacked the quality of this instrument.

Even the strings aren't that bad.

How are you giving me a metallic finish and a Satin neck for 89 quid!?

It's Amazing!!

Cons:

I have had to go out of my way to find any form of "fault". if you can call them faults.

-The scratch plate and hardware isn't standard, making it very difficult to add any upgrades without redrilling.

-Tone knob is very slightly wonky (barely noticeable).

- The dot markers on the side aren't the cleanest. (after 15 years I don't use them anyway)

- Neck pickup slightly too dark (which tbh - complement in the middle position)

- The neck is slightly on the thicker side (though that is my preference, not the guitar)

-The frets need a little polish (most guitars don't have polished frets)

-Tuners aren't the best

Absolutely fantastic guitar, not just for the money but the guitar it's self truly is a good guitar.

A great value for money guitar. Ideal for beginners. Excellent neck for that value. Electronics is below average and the tone doesn't do very good job.

BUT, it is playable, stays in tune and I love this guitar. It is a must have!

Amazing

This is a great guitar, regardless of the price tag. The sound, the tone, and the play-ability is just amazing. The finish on the guitar is also very high quality. It is hard to believe this guitar is as good as it is for such a low price. The beginners today are just spoilt, with quality like this at this price. I wish I had this when I was learning ...... :-)

The red one was so good I bought a blue one.

It’s a giant killer guitar.

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

Money well spent

Considering the price this is an absolute win!

I bought this model after my kid choose it for himself.

I tried my best to not influence him so I left him in total control (cutting the price range to avoid to have to say no). And he choose one of the model I prefer. Telecaster with a maple neck/keyboard.

We were both trilled waiting for it.

I was really surprised by the sound form those pickups and its wood tones.

It arrived with a nice setup to play.

I love it. Clean & crunch are perfect match to play some blues.

He loves it... and plays all the time with some heavy overdrive

His teacher was gladly surprised.

My wife loves we play it with the headphones probably but surely like to see us SO HAPPY !! :D

Best bang for your buck

This guitar plays much better than the price you pay. The neck is very smooth and easy to play. It stays in tune well and has a fantastic finish, zero flaws. It looks great hanging on my wall, but it is much better than just some wall art. I wish the bridge pickup had a little more bite to it, but it still had a good tone and overall a great sounding guitar. The best guitar you can get for this price.