Harley Benton TE-90FLT SB Deluxe Series 5-stars Reviews

This is a fantastic guitar!

Love this guitar. Been playing for a long time and this has replaced my 2009 American Deluxe Strat. The Harley Benton has great tone (kind of like filtertron) and both the bridge and neck are very usable/good! The setup wasn't good (high action) and the tuners are very average. I plan to sway the tuners and have already swapped the volume knob for a low friction one, since I use for swells.

Will be sending back

I think that this guitar is outstanding value for money but it's not the sound for me and I found the neck too narrow.

It was made exceptionianally well and looked great the only exception was the dreadfull quality of the plastic scratch plate and back covers and which are unfortunately not easy to buy new replacement ones because of the unusual pickup configuration but I would still recommend it but it's not for me.

UPDATE I have adjusted the pickup height's and now like the sound and I am getting used to the narrower neck so now starting really love it and will be keeping but will look for a scratch plate replacement.

Ofcourse you can spend thousands on a guitar and still have to

make adjustments

Excellent guitar for the price

The guitar plays and sounds great. The price is very affordable and the shipping was a reasonable time to the USA.

Great guitar punches well above its price point

Arrived safely, no damaged. Fantastic sound. Once setup to my preference it was a joy to play. I tend to find you need to spend a good few hours playing a new guitar, get familiar with it. I made some adjustments to the pickup height and the poles,.I prefer to try get the most out of the stock hardware if possible and rarely see the need to change.

Incredible Value

Despite what the price may lead you to believe, this is a real guitar. I gigged one of these for a brief period, and it never let me down. The only problem I have with it was the pickups, they do not sound like filtertrons, (which is fine for some, but I wanted a Cabronita), obviously this is an easy fix and does not detract from my recommendation.

Great Deal!

I wish the bridge was a little more country, but it plays great and it was very much a steal!

Great tele sound and playability

Thank you Harley Benton for making these great quality instruments available at such affordable prices

The golden age of cheap guitars

I have owned and played a lot of guitars the last 30 years.

Set it up to your likings.

Close your eyes,plug this wonderful guitar into a GOOD tube guitar amp and save a lot of money...

If you don't have a good tube amp, buy this guitar and save money for the amp.

If you want that 10% better guitar go for the famous custom shop.

If you are lucky you may hit a good resonating CS guitar.

But you may not...

I wish we had guitars like this on this price range 30 years ago...

I m gonna buy one more for decoration...

It is that cheap.

It's a very good choice, I love it. My previous guitar was a jackson, but this guitar from harley benton is much better. Sounds cleaner and richer than my previous guitar. I tell my friends about this guitar because I'm still amazed that you can buy a guitar this good for the price. It's simply unbelievable.

Overall great guitar

Great sounding and great playing guitar! One of my favorites so far!

Tube Snob

Most unique HB I have. Tone, Neck like silk and impedable fit and finish. No need to modify.

Quality Guitar

Not really skilled enough to give a true evaluation Of this quality guitar but I do have a good ear ! and what I can play sounds better than anything I have owned before.

Excellent value to boot.

Stunned.

I'm honestly stunned by this guitar. For the price, it rivals most guitars two to three times its price. Plays well straight out of the box. Smooth fret edges, gorgeous wood grain and neck, and the Filtertron style pickups sound amazing in clean and overdriven amp settings- they're clear and punchy, but drive harder than a traditional Tele does. The Canadian maple neck is smooth and feels fast and sleek, and despite what I've read about the tuners, everything seems to stay in tune just fine so far. In fact, this shipped from Germany to my house in the States over the course of ten days and the guitar was almost perfectly in tune when I unpacked it. I purchased this mainly as an additional guitar to record with, I'm excited to see how this performs!

Highly recommened!

I like this guitar!

I saw it on a review video and didn't think much of it until I heard it.

I didn't think it looked good, but how wrong when you see it in the flesh, the reverse headstock really suits it and it has a standout character all of it's own.

It sounds amazing, I play mostly with tube gain. It even sounds great with the tone turned right down on the bridge pickup.

The neck is super satin smooth and invites play.

This guitar has it's own personality, what more could you want for the money?

very very good

After reading a few reviews I decided upon this model and really was not disappointed. The Quality of finish is very good. The Guitar came pretty much set up and almost in tune. I changed the Trees for Goldo as recommended (although how much of an issue this is I do not know). The pickups are a real surprise very punchy but also give a good "Clean" sound. The action as delivered is good and easily playable (could be a bit lower though). The tuners Tune smoothly with no apparent slippage (so far). Volume and Tone controls work well enough, but I normally control via the amp so leave these dialled fully up (the pots and knobs are perhaps the only glimmer of cheapness). Selector switch selects..no cracking popping etc. As with other reviews of this guitar it plays, feels and looks like a much more expensive Guitar. Totally recommended

Very good guitar !!!

I was very surprised by the quality of this guitar. It is very well made for this price. This guitar is very good for those who play in the styles of rock, blues, jazz, funk. She sounds very convincing, she has her own unique sound. I really like to play it.The only thing that upset me was the work of the tuners. Two of them had a very big free move and setting was a big problem. I removed them all and smeared inside the WD-40. Now they all work smoothly and tuning is a pleasure. I made the setting for myself, changed the strings, as 1 and 2 were in rust. I did it all with pleasure. If you have hands-on skills, then this guitar is for you. I will gladly buy something from Harley Benton

Amazing

This guitar is awesome!

It's an absolute pleasure to play.

With a little bit of tweaking it turns out great, much better than anything else you can find for the price, and sometimes even double the price. That by itself should tell you a lot!

Here are the pros:

* The frets were levelled, dressed and crowned very well. They needed polishing, but that's to be expected and is easy work that you can do for 15 minutes in home when you change your strings.

* The neck joint is really tight, the neck itself is well centered

* The guitar resonates as every guitar should.

* The tuners are better than I expected, they are somewhat smooth (for the price). You certainly won't find a guitar with better tuning keys for the same amount of money.

* The FLT (we all know what that stands for lol) pickups are probably the best feature of the guitar, it just sounds amazing! As someone who hates single coils but needed clarity I couldn't be more satisfied. The guitar is suitable for everything from super clean stuff to stoner/sludge. Don't expect to play death metal on it though.

* The guitar looks gorgeous altogether.

There are a few cons, that are easiliy fixable though:

* The tone and volume pots are very.. "sudden". The changes in volume and tone are somewhat abrupt. But you can easily change the pots or if you are like me - not really use them except for muting the guitar.

* The tuning keys, albeit smoother than expected, still can be changed for better performance.

* The string trees MUST be changed for higher quality ones or at least roller ones. I replaced mine with Goldo Roller string trees and the difference is big.

* Two of the pickup screws were screwed aslant. They work, but it looks a bit ugly when you happen to notice it.

Still, I'd buy that guitar 10/10 times.

Unless you are completely ignorant or an absolute cork sniffer, you know every guitar has it's flaws, and some work will be done in order to make the best out of it. With this guitar - certainly not a lot.

Great guitar

This is a really fantastic guitar at its price point. I'm really blown away by how much I enjoy playing it.

Mine is as pictured (including the belly cut - something other have reported not having). The only differences are that it also has the sunburst finish on the back and the bridge saddles are a slightly different design.

The good: The body finish is flawless and beautiful. The neck and fret board have a nice satin finish that feels really good. It sounds great! Even the first time I strummed it without amplification I said "wow" to how it sounded. The pickups have lower output for humbuckers (which is what I wanted) and sound fantastic. They're on the darker end of the tonal spectrum, but still sound clear and warm with good midrange. A few of the frets have a barely detectable sharpness to their edges, but not nearly like you would expect for a sub 200-priced guitar - and they were easy to dull with a bit of sandpaper. Setup - the guitar came out of the box with a pretty good setup. Only had to make a very (very) minor truss rod adjustment to provide a bit more neck relief and had to adjust the intonation a bit.

There were a couple of minor quality issues, but nothing major: The pickup selection toggle was loose. One of the pickup height adjustment screws is in slightly crooked, so it sticks up a little further than it should above the pickup. One of the tuning machine heads was so badly misaligned that tuning that string was difficult because of its resulting proximity to the the adjacent tuner (this was easy to fix by loosening the screw on the back and rotating the machine head. There was enough play between the shaft of the screw and the side of the screw hole that I didn't need to fill and re-drill the hole).

Overall, I'm extremely happy with this purchase. Don't expect a $2000 custom shop kind of instrument at this pricepoint. But it is DEFINITELY a better guitar than a couple of Mexican Fender Teles I played a couple of days before this arrived.

Superb value, great sound, lovely guitar

First of all, this is an amazing guitar. For the price, it's an absolute no brainer and can easily hold it's own with the bigger name brands.

However, mine doesn't look exactly like the photos on the website. The main difference is that there is no belly cut on the back of the body. As it turns out, the guitar is very comfortable to hold and lovely to play so it's not a deal breaker, just not what I was expecting. Also the sunburst colour goes around the back as well, which is a bonus as it's very nicely done.

It's heavier than my other guitars but I don't see that as an issue. The neck is very comfortable 'C' shape and slightly slimmer than other 'C' shapes I've played such as Squier Teles. The joint between the neck and body is a little messy, but for this price I can let that go as it's structurally sound.

The guitar arrived well set up. I lowered the action a touch, but that's just personal preference. The intonation was perfect and it holds tune just fine. The humbucker pickups aren't as hot as some, but it has a great tone and I love the simplicity of the single tone and volume knobs.

Overall a great guitar and I thoroughly recommend it.

Amazing for the price, great guitar in general

This is my second Harley Benton, and this one came to me even better out of the box. Stock hardware and electronics are way better than you would expect and mine had a flawless finish.

Pickups sound like true filtertrons, and it is still possible to get that real tele twang if you want. Great AC-DC, rockabilly and blues tones too.

Only minor niggle is the fretwork is not quite as good as a proper high end instrument but is still every bit as good as a £1000 guitar, and miles above its price point.

I will likely change the nut to a compensated model but other than that, I doubt I'll change a thing. I could quite comfortably gig with this as my main guitar.