Harley Benton TE-90FLT VW Deluxe Series Reviews

Harley Benton TE 90FLT VW review

Beautiful telecaster style guitar, very sturdy and the tone with the lovely pick ups! the action was a little high when it arrived but nothing I couldnt adjust myself. Over all great experience and the tone is comparable to some of the humbuckered classive vibe squier telecasters.

Terrific value - minor tweaks will make it even better.

The guitar looks amazing - it's less "pink" that it appears in some photos - it's a definite white but with the beige of the wood showing through and the grain adding a bluish-greyish element - lovely grain it is too. The pickups are great and the neck feels wonderful with a satin finish. Without weighing it - it feels medium weight for a T-style, about the same as my Fender Plater series Tele. The pickups produce something that's sort of halfway between a single coil and a humbucker - and that's a good sound. Love the bridge. The pots are good and the tone control is outstanding, with usable sounds across the full range. Action is around 5/64th on the low E - intonation is almost there out of the box. Even the Harley Benton logo and name on the headstock are well done - using the F-style gold text with black outline. The tuners are adequate - they'll do for now but I will upgrade those. The fret ends are very good but will be perfect with a little tidy-up. There's some fret buzz that's not simply down to the action or neck relief - easy enough to correct and I've had that from guitars cost four or five times as much as this. The pickups' screws stand proud which doesn't look so nice and they could catch the strings or fingers if set high - I'll look for suitable replacements with a small head so they'll properly fit into the recess of the pickup. The nut is good but could be filed a little lower if needed (I'll probably replace it though - just because). I bought this expecting to spend a bit more on correcting minor flaws - what I got is nearly perfect as is. It's reassuringly solid and for the sake of a bit of filing and polishing frets - maybe a new nut and change those tuners - it's incredibly good value and is different enough to keep a tele addict like me happy. And it really is very. very pretty.

Great for its price

Mine parcel came damaged but i kept it anyways because its still playable i'm in love with pickups they can handle glass bright clean tones and harsh drive tones as well not a totally humbucker nor a single i totally recommend

Very good guitar for the price

Sincerely, for this price it's really difficult to get "more guitar". After a setup it plays and feels like a much more expensive guitar. I think they cut some corners in the electronics department as the pickups and pots are not the best, but that definitely doesn't mean they're bad! I think the only brand to get close to the quality of HB guitars in this price range is Jet.

Not Quite as Expected

I chose this guitar on the sounds due to the pickups and reviews I have heard. I notice not mant written reviews mention the actual SOUNDS but lots of other issues. The Guitar was my Christmas present and it came poorly packaged and the box it was in too shallow for this model. the volume Tone and selector switch all punctured the lid. Not good but however no damage to the guitar but that was luck,. The guitar is not beautiful in my opinion. Too much whiteish paint and the wood beneth is not particularlygood grain with differences in the grain pattern and some black or dark graining. The neck is a very white bland maple and the matt finish makes it look very cheap. I prefer a Gloss finish. Fender introduced matt neck finishes as a cost reduction then found a "reason" But 70's guitarists were not slowed down by the finish and protecting the instrument is my top priority hence gloss finish is prefered. Maybe if you are Steve Vai you could claim a speed advantage but the feel of the neck is cheap compared to the TE52 and the TE90FLT VW boasts on the headstock Delux which it is not. The Pickguard is rough from the CNC machine, I got £90 guitars with a better pickgurd. The feel of the neck is not HOME for my hands and string tension is on the high side.. The machine heads are fine I never had poor machine heads on a Harley benton. The rest of the hardware is good quality but the guitar is not lookinganywhere near std let alone delux. The sounds are more or less what I expected and this is a diferent sounding guitar to the TE52. The pickups are of reasonable output and give some nice sounds for blues ad funk. However dont expect ritch bass notes to roll off those filtertron style pickups. Also full chords can be a bit cluttered compared to Gibson pickups which articulate every note. The sound is what I got this guitar for and it delivers the difference to compliment my other guitars. So I am Happy but not over the moon. The JA60 for example is far more Delux than this is and will blow you away with feel accuracy and sheer versitility. The TE52 is also a bigger bang for buck.

Amazing guitar

This was my introduction to Harley Benton guitars, and it was a big one.

The first thing I noticed was the color of the body. I read several comments in forums saying the body was whiter than it appears on the preview. They were right, and I am perfectly happy with that. The rest of the guitar was smooth. No nitpicks or major manufacturing faults. All it took was one clockwise turn of the truss rod for this thing to play like butter. My only gripe (not HB’s fault) is having to get used to tuning on an upside-down Tele headstock. I want to make sure I’m tuning the right E string (thankfully, no string breaks yet).

I took this guitar to a recent gig, and I was blown away by the sound. I use a Roland Cube modeling amp, and it made this thing sing. I noticed that the clean channel didn’t put out as much power as the drive the whole night. Granted, I used a drive pedal ON the clean channel, so this was more than likely user error. That didn’t take away anything from how this thing rung out. This guitar is perfect for pretty much any style of music.

Overall, this has been a great experience and a fantastic introduction to the HB brand. I already have my next guitar in mind, for sure HB.

Great guitar for the price

I have bought many teles this is the first one that I took out of the box and it played exactly as I wanted it to. It was properly setup and sounded fantastic

Nice tele style guitar

Nice little guitar that won’t break the bank. Fun to play. And I love the pickups , they remind me of Gretch filtrons.

Low output pickups are cool

These pickups have a bit more grit than Broadtrons. I like the way they sound. The fretwork is perfect. The setup was good. There's a routed cavity under the scratch plate that serves no purpose. If it's purpose is weight relief, it is unnecessary and only serves to makes the guitar unbalanced on the shoulder. Same with the String Trees, take them off for better tuning stability.

Excellent

This is my gigging guitar the build quality and sound are excellent I have several fenders but in my opinion this is better!

Very Impressed!!!!!!!!

great guitar great sound WoWWWWW!!!!! nice beauty

great finish!

i really liked the finish on this one. the pickups are not that good, but put in a seymour duncan there and you have a great guitar!

My second Harley Benton Guitar

This is my second Harley Benton guitar and is awesome. I've always wanted this style guitar with a reverse neck and this one doesn't break the bank for the quality. Great Job

Really nice!

I agree with all the positive previous reviews! The guitar is more than gig -ready out of the box. I took it to my tech and he found nothing to fix about it. not even the nut slots. I think the pickups are the most strong asset of the guitar. Really really good pickups. I would like a more vintage radius but that is my personal preference. I won't spend any extra cash on the guitar. It works perfectly as it is.

Excellent Value!

The guitar arrived in good condition. There was one small flaw with one of the string trees. The hole for the string tree was stripped, causing the string tree and screw to pop out of place when I went to restring the guitar. I used toothpicks and wood glue to form a new bond for the screw to hold.

The guitar needed a string height and intonation adjustment, which was expected. After a small setup, the guitar sounds and plays lovely, with just a small amount of string buzz.

In my opinion, the guitar provided an excellent value for the money!

I've had it for 3 months now and still think it's an amazing guitar. The only issue I noticed when it arrived was a loose pickup screw, which I had to turn with pliers. Except for that, everything else almost perfect, this guitar gives you an incredible value for the price.

When I opened the guitar it did not take me more than 10 minutes to leave it to my liking. A small calibration, light sanding of the nut slits and adjustment of the action, which the guitar allowed easily, since the frets were well leveled.

I would definitely recommend this for someone who wants a filtertron guitar without busting the bank (like me haha).

Quality issues

The pickups on the guitar are very nice and it plays well. But I have had to replace the selector switch and the holes in the back for the strings were not drilled straight and this caused some issues with the bridge. The pickguard edges were not finished as well and has already chipped. I would recommend this guitar if the quality improves. Maybe I just got one that slipped by quality control.My guitar was NOT a B-Stock.

Genuinely staggering

I'm cautious of giving this guitar too high-praise for fear of driving the prices up, but this is genuinely a pro-level guitar at entry-level price. I've played guitar for 27 years and been a touring music industry professional for about 10. In this time, I have laid hands on plenty of big-name, professionally set-up guitars and this relatively cheap, indonesian built guitar about holds its own.

At this price, you'd really only expect a guitar to be a decent platform for modification and upgrade but mine looks, plays and sounds great, straight out of the box. The string guage it's shipped with are a little heavier than I'll probably use but even so, the action is really low and I can't find a single fret buzz, nor are there any rough fret ends. The fretboard and rear of the neck are smooth satin finished while the headstock has a contrasting gloss finish, which I find to be a nice touch. The body's finish is all gloss and I can't make out any blemishes or imperfection.

I'll likely add locking tuners, purely as a matter of preference but the existing ones seem to have smooth action and the bridge is reassuringly chunky and well cast and polished.

The pickups seem to have extended high frequency range and while my preference is typically for darker sounds, these produce some of the best clean sounds I've ever heard. I'm not sure what the capacitor values are but the tone knob does a great job of taming but not muffling the highs at around the half-way mark, giving the mids and lows a little more focus and at the very bottom of it's travel seems to have a prominent resonance peak. This mightn't be to everyone's taste I find it reminiscent of Josh Homme-esque cocked-wah sounds and very useable.

I would happily recommend this instrument to pro, touring level musicians as equally as I would someone looking to get their first guitar. Incredible value. Buy one!

Good Sound For The Price But

After 2+ years with the guitar I can say that it's an interesting instrument with some flaws that are kind of expected for the price.

Soundwise its very good considering the price. I even used it for studio recordings and live shows for the tele-ish feeling.

Quality though, is not that good and it has numerous flaws (mostly the frets and instability with temperature changes. Also electronics are quite bad) that make it unreliable for serious work. Its a 185 euro guitar after all.

The fact that it has a very good sound for the price, and can even be utilized for serious use in the studio makes it a really good choice for beginners, since the guitar can be relevant after the player has "outgrowned" it.

Another use case (and the way I use it) is as a practice/travel guitar when you don't want to take your higher end instrument(s) with you.

A really good guitar

This is a far better guitar than I expected. I've got several (!) guitars some of them more expensive than this but none are better in real terms. The video reviews of this guitar usually emphasise the overdriven sounds but it sounds just as good clean. Its just so much fun to drive an amp with it that I suspect that's why they do it. The pickups are excellent and the guitar has a nice attack and sustain. The neck is full but fast.

I have had no problems with the tuners but if I ever gig it I may change them. I think the reverse headstock adds distinction to this guitar.

The only reservation is that I would have preferred the Sunburst but that was not an option and is a minor thing.