Harley Benton TE-62DB CAR Reviews

Near flawless but needed a few upgrades to stay in tune.

The guitar looks amazing and the build quality and finish were near flawless. Just a couple of tiny blemishes in the finish on the back of the body and that's it. I had tuning issues at the bridge where strings were pinging out of tune while playing. I fitted a bone nut, round barrel string trees and a Wilkinson bridge with compensated brass saddles and the tuning issues were gone. The strings were cutting into little notches in the metal bridge which obviously caused the pinging noises and tuning problems. After these upgrades the guitar plays fine now and i'm happy to have bought it.

Great

Best bang for the buck in the business.

CAR confusion

I've been doing self-build guitars for a few years, and now i'm in the process of doing Cadillac colour telecasters, i've nitro finished a few Squiers and sold them on to fund my self-builds. I have in my collection, a Surf Green, Sea-Foam Green double bound, a Daphne Blue, Shell Pink and a Metallic Purple, i sold my Lake Placid Blue, but have since replaced it with A HB TE-62 LPB. Building guitars from scratch can be expensive due to the cost of parts and painting them can take a couple of months. I needed a Candy Apple Red and an LPB and with this new line of TE-62's they have the colours and the quality and will save a lot of time and money, i always upgrade the bridge, pickups and electrics and use them to upgrade cheaper guitars that i sell on. The pickups and hardware on these are pretty decent and there is no real need to change anything, i just prefer to. These are quality built guitars and a really nice neck, their Laurel necks are a slimmer profile than the maple ones, which are pretty wide (56.5mm) and suits me better. The TE-62 CAR in the title does not mean Candy Apple Red, these are CARdinal red, but the former sounds a bit more appealing than the latter in terms of a sales pitch, the guitar looks good either way. The other thing that concerns a lot of the buyers is, not being able to change the pickguard, so i went about finding out why that was. What i discovered was, the bridges are fitted a little bit further from the neck than usual and that affects the installation of the control plate, as a result they have had to re-design the pickguard to compensate for this, maybe they are using the same CNC machine they use for the 6 saddle bridge type. I am not a fan of the mint green pickguard on some of them so i bought a blank sheet and cut my own, a bit fiddly but well worth the effort, if you want to change the pickguard, then that's your only option. These guitars are game-changers and i highly recommend them.

Great value for money

I bought this because I had some bareknuckle tele pickups lying around that needed a home. I expected to have to file the frets down a bit and to make the neck workable with some steel wool or sanding. Nope! Neck is slick as anything and the frets are great. I haven't tested the pickups so I can't comment on those, but this guitar is made extremely well for the price. The wiring has redundancy in the grounding (no need to jump the tone pot and switch to volume pot since they're already connected electronically), but removing the redundancy made no audible difference so it doesn't matter. The holes for the pickups and pots are unshielded, which is easily fixed with some copper tape and a bit of patience. This is also no must, and I'm certain this guitar is a lot better than any tele-type in the same price range (or a couple of price ranges above) from the big-name brand.

I love this guitar!

Straight out of the box, this is one of the best guitars I have ever purchased, no matter the cost. I recently sold a Fender 60th Anniversary Ash Telecaster and this Tele plays as good or better than the Fender. The pickups in this guitar have more character, clarity and power than those on the Fender. As for the weight, this guitar is a dream and compares favorably with my Danelectros, which are my lightest guitars. The finish is spotless and without any flaws and the tuners keep everything stable. The only thing I did is adjust the truss rod 1/8th of a turn to get the relief closer to the way I like it. The intonation was nearly perfect and the action just right. I just ordered the TE-62DB in black because I like this model so much. A winner.

great guitar for the money!

nice looking guitar.. the heck looks better than it is in the picture

My fourth T-style from Harley Benton.

I own four T-style Harley Benton guitars. Each one serves it own purpose. Each one is easily modifiable. Each one is worth 3x the cost of the guitar.

You will NOT regret buying one of these TE-62 guitars. They are the REAL deal.

Did I really say I'd never buy another HB

I got 2 te-70s last year, and they had some flaws. The tuners were terrible, the string through drilling slightly off, ferrules fell outand needed a lot of setup work. I said I'd never get another Harley Benton. However the te-62 had been positively reviewed so I thought I would give it a go.

When I opened the box I was slightly disappointed. The candy apple red was a bit lighter than I had hoped, and as another reviewer has said, in a certain light, slightly pink. But I was impressed by the metal flaking, it is eye catching.

As always the guitar came very well packaged.

Once I had the guitar in my hands, I was excited. The neck is fantastic. A real quality feel to it. No rough fret ends, and finished superbly. The nut seems well cut too.

The paintwork is good with no blemishes or overrun into the binding. The neck fits perfectly to the body.

The guitar was perfectly playable out of the box. Good action and intonation. I did tweak the saddles and truss rod slightly too my own personal preference, as I prefer a lower action. The vintage tuners felt positive and I had no issues with the guitar staying in tune.

Honestly, I had already been looking at pickups to replace the roswells with, but once I plugged the guitar in, I was impressed, they do exactly what you would expect from vintage voiced pickups, classic telecaster sound. I can't wait to do a side to side comparison with my fender 50s Vintera pickups. They could be quite close.

I would definitely recommend this guitar, it is value for money. The improvement in quality from my te-70s is amazing. If the setup out of the box is the same as mine, a great beginners guitar too.

I have swapped the saddles for brass ones, and will be replacing the import switch, but this is personal preference. I haven't checked for any high frets and will report any problems here.

Brilliant guitar at twice the price

I say brilliant at twice the price because the freight to Australia was nearly the price of the guitar. Was It worth it ? Absolutely, this is as good if not better than my player Tele. the finish the look, and the tones out of this guitar are what one searches for. As for the freight I received this item from Germany as fast as I can get an order from Sydney to Tasmania

so happy with the experiance that ill be back for more.

So much Guitar for the money

In my opinion this instrument compares well with. Instrument 3xs it's cost. I was impressed with the overall quality and sound. After being disappointed with a well known companies quality control I was delighted by the attention to detail.