Harley Benton TE-70RW Deluxe Series Reviews

great tele

this guitar has superb quality,plays and sounds really good,fit and finish is top notch.tuners are the only reason it lost a star,they can feel they have play when turning.upgraded mine ,only cost £19. now spot on.

Great and beautiful guitar

After listening to and watching many reviews I decided to buy this rosewood tele style guitar. For under $200 what did I have to lose?? Excellent guitar and great tone. Beats any Squire or indonesia Fender hands down. Set up is also great!!

I love this guitar and have been gigging with it regularly.

You will not be disappointed

Good, but not 'great'...even at this price

I really love the rosewood veneer and the piping to front and back of the body... it looks classy, but the frets have sharp ends that will need filing and the neck has a weird paint finish.

Update: 6 months down the line now and I am having to change the neck as I can't get used to the weird glossy painted neck, plus it's been set awkwardly at a leaning forward angle because it had 'factory fitted' bits of wood added under the screws.

A new satin finished maple neck and a cream scratch plate have completely transformed this guitar... it looks so cool and plays really well now.

It's a steal

Wasn't too sure what to expect for my first Harley Benton but needn't have worried - Setup was fine for me and the guitar played well out of the box. I swapped the tuners out for a set of HB locking tuners, cleaned and conditioned the fretboard (which was properly dirty - this made a huge difference) and changed the strings. It looks gorgeous, twangs like it should, plays brilliantly, stays in tune as well as anything and all for less than £150. It's a steal.

Budget Guitar and Budget Parts

The tuning pegs are awful on this guitar and rarely stays in tune. The finish is very good though and when in tune sounds good.

love the brass saddles

really good chicken picken bridge pu and saddles

Outstanding mod platform

I did a full setup, installed locking tuners and a set of tonerider trt2 pickups and WOW! THIS now is my go to guitar. My paws are smaller size, so I removed some neck material to bring it to a medium "D" shape to fit my hand. Brand snobs would weep over how great his guitar is now. Great tele sound and the playability is better than a Fender. The quality control was very good on this particular guitar (better than some of my previous Harley Bentons). Oh yeah, and the rosewood may be a veneer, but it still looks great. I am very pleased. I have around $250.00 total in it, and it is a better guitar than my $500 G&L ASAT, which is a very good guitar. Go figure.

Great deal and value for money

Great deal and value for money. Build quality is good with a nice neck pocket. Set up on arrival was good. Action a bit high so adjusted in a few minutes. Truss rod spot on, frets well seated.

Sound not exactly a telicast however has that twang. Neck a bit deeper than its expensive brother. Looks great, rosewood top looks expensive and the overall quality of the guitar is much higher than the price tag

Good for the money

Visually the guitar is finished to quite a high standard. Frets are nicely finished with no sharp edges. Playability and pickups are very good for the price.

My only slight niggles are the tuners all have a 'dead spot' when turned. This can be worked around though. The nut on my guitar appears to be thinner than intended as there is a visible gap in the cutout for the nut. Doesn't appear to affect playability and a new bone nut might be on the cards anyway.

Overall this is a lot of guitar for very little money. And if you stand on your roof with it you can pretend to be George Harrison :-)

After standing on the roof a la George I've given it 5 stars allround - Superb

Ok but...

So the guitar is ok as I say in the title but. A few details about the guitar.

The finish is very good looks nice. The weight is ok but if it was a little lighter I wouldn't have a problem. Tuning keys are cheap but it seems that they hold tune. The nut is ok . Elecronics are ok too but the tone control could dail some change to the sound earlier and don't have to almost take down to zero so i can see the tone changing. The volume and pickup selector works fine. Now about the pickups. Their not bad but both are slightly microphonic .Especially the bridge. If toy tap the pick on the bridge or the control plate you can hear through the amp especially on high volume You can also hear the pickups change . But I didn't get any squealing with fuzz or overdrive.

The playability was not good.I had to polish the frets and set it uo from scratch in order to play soft and good. At first when i played my fingers hurt and the got black by the neck. Maybe it is painted? Don't know.

Overall the guitar sounds and plays good , with all the above that I mentioned

IF It is worth it.I Believe for the money it's ok if you can make some adjustments to the guitar.

Something I forgot the neck is quite flat radius wise so it takes some time to get used to it if you played in 9,5-inch radius all your life as I did. I didn't find it the most comfortable I must say. The most important I forgot is that when i changed strings all the string ferrules got out with the strings witch means I had to glue them back in . Also, a bad thing.

That's all as I mentioned It's an ok guitar if you can do some adjustments.

A beauty

It's beautiful. It's classy looking. Very happy with it. I didn't have to do anything to this one. Plays and sounds fine out of the box.

Woah...what a guitar!!!

I am ecstatic about this guitar. I have a number of different guitars. This is my first guitar Telecaster style guitar. Having it in my hands and playing it has turned me into a Telecaster lover for sure!!! The hardware, finish, action and play-ability are great out of the box. Actually, only a half step out of tune if you can believe it!! The SOUND!!!! I love the tone and feel of this guitar!!!

I am incredibly impressed with this guitar

If I walked into a music store and played this instrument I would expect the price tag to be between $500 and $600 (I'm in the U.S. so that's US dollars.) All in all I paid less than $200 for the guitar, the case, and the international shipping. I'm very happy with the purchase.

Pros:

Good sound quality, very playable, beautiful finish, large radius fretboard, jumbo frets

Cons:

The pickups are noisy when you play high gain stuff, I really would have liked higher quality tuners - there are some tuning stability issues with the stock ones, the back of the neck is a glossy finish so it can get sticky when you play it

I've made two YouTube videos featuring this guitar:

1) Unboxing and First Impressions - >

2) Extended play demo (how's it sound in a mix) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxe4ehZB1YU&t=27s

Incredible

Very nicely built. Good hardware. Sound is more than okay. Incredible guitar for this amount of money. The setup could have been a bit better but this was easily improved. Nice!

Amazing value for the price.

This guitar is an amazing instrument for such a cheap price. Barely needed any adjustments out of the box and sounds quite nice. It can also be a great starting point for a project guitar.

Love it!

Great fit and finish! does have a lot of 60 hz. buzz on bridge pickup. Could use some shielding. Easy fix at home.

It is what you're hoping for!

I don't leave reviews generally but this guitar has made me so happy that I thought I'd share my experience.

I have started playing again in true mid-life crisis fashion, putting together a new Clapton-esque bluesy rock band and, as singer & (strictly) rhythm guitarist, needed a new Telecaster. Well, you do don't you...

I didn't want to spend a lot of money but didn't want a tuneless plank either, so started with the obvious online research, worked through the various Squier models etc until concluding that the cheapest one that might be nearly good enough quality was the Classic Vibe '60s. But that's still £350 and a bit much for what I wanted.

However, during the research I kept coming across these Harley Benton guitars which, despite being a 'own brand' and relatively inexpensive, kept getting surprisingly good reviews. I went looking, found this beautiful-looking Rosewood TE-70 (I'm a huge George Harrison fan) - less expensive even than I was hoping to have to spend - and, after reading all the reviews, nervously placed the order.

If this story rings a bell with you then don't be nervous, buy it. It's absolutely fabulous, beautiful, flawless, wonderful, everything you hoped it would be, and more. Ok, so it's not an original £8k original but it's every guitar I'll ever need.

It arrived (to Northern Ireland) less than a week after placing the order and was great out of the box. But spend an hour or 2 getting the action down and the intonation set and you have a solid, quality piece of very pretty kit that makes that classic Tele sound you hoped it would, stays in tune, plays beautifully and makes you feel very clever about having found such great value.

If you're reading this it's because you're thinking of buying this guitar. Stop thinking, stop worrying, just buy it - you won't regret it.

Some comments

Pros:

- Price

- Bridge

- Sound

- Neck profile

Cons:

- Tuners

- No belly and right hand cuts

The great guitar for the great price, i would recommend to change tuners but other stuff is great, bridge is awesome, I didn't have problem with intonation tuningm everything sound right. Pickups are great too, I didn't hear any noise only clean sound. The neck is very comfortable for playing. Overall guitar looks solid and made with high quality.

Great 　guitar and sound

This is a slid guitar with an excellent feel and good authentic pickups, It does have its teething problems but it is comparable with a genuine Tele! I use it for practice or when I do not want to take my other fenders out....good stand in or second guitar

Superb !

Amazing value for money, it's closest rival is the Squire "Classic Vibe" at 3 x the price.

Everything works as it should although I will be changing the tuners & nut along with the electronics (pickups/controls) to my own preference.

Out of the box it only needed a tuning adjustment to be able to begin playing.

Action/intonation were close enough & I'll attend to oiling the fretboard/dressing the frets when I fit a set of strings.

There is not a lot of "dressing" to do to make this guitar play really well

Fit & finish is good to really good throughout with only a couple of small marks (under the lacquer) at the rear of the head stock & some slight roughness on the dressing of the lacquer at one side of the body at the neck pocket

How could this guitar be improved ?

Only by spending more time in the factory on assembly which would increase costs.

I see this guitar as a great "base model" from which to make a guitar that is exactly to your own requirements for very little money compared to the major manufacturers.

My score is 9/10 for quality & 10/10 value for money