Harley Benton TE-90QM Trans Red Reviews

Amazing guitar

I'm blown away by the quality of this guitar! This is the least amount of money I have ever paid for a guitar. The quality of the guitar fit and finish, fretwork and setup is fantastic. The only improvement would be locking tuners. And the only negative thing that I could say is that my particular guitar is heavy. I absolutely love it 😀 😍

TE-90QM - Budget Friendly

Was wanting a "T" Style guitar to add to my collection and this model looked nice and was cheap. I was not expecting much but was actually surprised at the quality of this in relation to its price. There were some issues with the Guitar (Which I expected) i: Nut needed graphite adding and small burrs filling ii: Pickups are a little weak (although I am comparing to a Revstar RSS02T) - Have had to raise them a little (but still weak) iii: Provided strings were pretty bad. iv: Not a fan of the Amaranth Fretboard (Although it isn't as bad after 20-30 hours of playing in) Lots of good things about the guitar though i: No Sharp Fret Edges ii: Intonates perfectly (Action adjusted to my preference with no issues) iii: No blemishes on the finish iv: Looks like a very nice Guitar. Overall for the price I have been very happy with this guitar.

Grande strumento

Grande strumento, ottimo rapporto qualità/prezzo Pro Estetica, è particolare, ricorda una tele ma ha la sua personalità, bellissima la resa dei colori Comodità, bel manico, scorrevole, piccolina, si suona benissimo Suono, i P90 fanno il loro lavoro Contro: Pesante. È una semiacustica, santo cielo, ma pesa come una Gibson lo Materiali. Le viti dei pickup erano spanate, c'è voluta una sudata per sistemarli. Se non sei uno smanettone bene così.

P90!

This is my first guitar with P90 single coil pickups. And f holes!! It’s a beautiful guitar, and it sounds awesome! Comfortable neck. UNBELIEVABLE price to value ratio.

Lovely to play, with Ernie Ball slinkys. Super well made and beautiful to behold. What more can I say?! Worth every penny.

This guitar is a thrill

Its light weight and beautiful sound and also the craftsmenship quality blew me away!!!

Stunning for the Price

This guitar is amazing for the price, sounds great out the box and understand the comment "Air Intakes" in the video. It looks great and comparable to guitars 5 times the amount. One that will remain in my collection.

Only comment for improvement is stainless steel frets, which is not a massive deal overall.

Very high quality guitar

This is an unbelievable guitar for the price. Extremely high quality throughout and the finish is just sublime. It looks every bit as good as it sounds too. Just brilliant...

Sadly not as good as it looks

It had to happen eventually, I have bought a few Haley Benton's and they have been great looking - well built guitars, unfortunately this one falls short of the mark. I'm not sure why there is so much difference in the quality but I suspect it comes from a different factory than any of the other models I have.

I had never owned a semi hollow bodied guitar nor a guitar with P90's before so I thought I would take the plunge on this unit as it was within my price range.

It is on first looks a very beautiful looking guitar but once you look deeper it quickly becomes apparent that there are some issues.

The main issue for me is the neck. I had to send back the first guitar sent (apart from a few minor issues) the neck wasn't fitted properly and had been "over" tightened which left some screws spinning which I thought may have been the reason I could not tune it properly.

The replacement had the opposite, two of the fixing screws had not even been tightened and were sticking out about 5mm which I gently finished off fitting. Unfortunately this unit also seems to have tuning issues and I am now trying to figure out why (hopefully I wont need to replace the neck).

On both units the fingerboard itself needed a lot of TLC and the frets were in a very poor condition with some sort of built up composite (corrosion) which was extremely difficult to get off.

I also noticed when sorting out the fingerboard that it appears to have been painted or stained black for some reason which kept coming off when cleaning. I found it strange that they had done this as on the sides you can seen it was actually a lovely medium shade of brown with a touch of purple in it which would have looked great on the entire board.

I feel that Harley Benton have missed a real opportunity here to make this an absolute winner of a guitar, which it still could become.

As noted previously it is a lovely looking instrument with a unique design that unfortunately is let down in the manufacturing and QC process.

At the very least HB I'm hoping that from my review you get on to sorting out the neck issues with your manufacturer.

Very good

Still in our collection- love it

So much guutar for the money

I've had this guitar for a while now and it's nearly all I play. I have a bunch of more expensive 'brand' guitars but I keep coming back to this one. Arrived set up nicely. Pickups are really sweet sounding. The only modification I've made are the addition of some more precise tuners, frictionless string trees and strap locks. Warm chimey clean tones, overdrives like a slightly irate boss and feels like butter in the hand. Strong recommed

Great

Waited quite some time for this to arrive, but it was worth the wait. the finish, setup, and build quality is superb. Thx

5 Stars a reach? Not really

I was a professional for 30+ years and have owned many "dream" guitars. This guitar came in only needing a some slight fret work and intonation. I've had guitars worth many times more needing more work. The value is out of this world. I'm in love with the tone of the P90s. The neck is silky smooth and very easy to play. After a month or so of use now it feels better each time I pick it up. So, yeah... 5 stars it is.

Beautiful Guitar

This guitar has been an absolute joy to own, look at, and play. I have had absolutely no issues out of the box and within minutes I was playing it.

Hollowtastic

Amazing guitar even if it was treble the price, stunning feel and tone, great quality, I don’t know how they do it for the price.

delicious guitar

I can only say that I love it

I'll limit my intervention to replacing the tuners by locking tuners and adjust a bit the fine tuning

perfect

Plays great, looks great, sounds great and it's got P-90s can't go wrong!!!

The guitar arrived in perfect condition. I just adjusted the bridge slightly to lower the action and it plays great. I own several Gibson's and Fender s this guitar is insanely good for the price! I have always loved P- 90s and the Roswell PUPs sound really good. I plan to purchase the Aleous Frost Flame next.

I guess it's the only option at this price point.

Why did I buy the guitar?

I was looking to get something with P90's. I liked the look of the guitar. The positive reviews and the cheap price sealed the deal.

Finish:

The back of the guitar looks really nice with the translucent red and the wood grain. Back of the neck has a nice smooth finish.

The binding has black scratches on multiple locations, both on the f-holes and the body. Binding chipped at the neck pocket. The "flame" top looks nothing like it does on the pictures. If I didn't know better I would say it is a sticker/painted pattern, it does not look like a veneer. It just makes the guitar look ugly.

Hardware:

The tuners are already slipping. Tuners loose. The bridge is pretty good for this price point.

Electronics:

The pickups are really noisy for some reason but not as high output as other P90's. Only usable in middle position even if playing with a clean sound. The pot's are crackling. Pots mounted tilted so the buttons have scratched the finish. Pickup selector switch is damaged, needs to be replaced. The 1/4" input socket is somehow not to spec, the lead will stick out about 4mm when fully inserted. The neck pickup and socket loose with screw holes stripped. one neck pickup screw hole not deep enough.

Setup and feel out of the box:

Firs impression out of the box was a lot of fret buzz but relatively high action. Nut needs filing. Intonation was off, but easy to fix. Back of the neck felt nice, fret ends sticking out a lot more then I would expect. Strings rusted.

How does it play after a setup?

Once I started setting up the guitar I quickly found the reason for the high action combined with fret buzz. I can't even describe how uneven the frets are. Checking with a fret rocker and feeler gauges I can find several that are >0.5mm higher/lower then the next fret. Also uneven height from Low string to high string. Some of the frets are loose, but others are seated properly and still messed up. My regular luthier suggested a full refret as the cheapest option. And this is where I put the whole project on hold to think about it.

Conclusion:

So I bought the guitar because of the P90's and the way it looks. The P90's lack the oomph of a traditional P90 and the guitar doesn't look anything like the pictures.

To make the guitar actually playable I would have to pay more then the price of the guitar to a luthier. To make it gig worthy I would also need to swap out the tuners and all of the electronics. And after all of that work it would still be an ugly guitar worth about 100€. Not worth the investment, I'm just gonna cut my losses and try and sell it to anyone willing to buy. But it does get 2 stars, because if you want a thinline T-type with P90's, there isn't anything else out there at this price point. Your next option is a Squier that costs more then double the price of this and has no binding and no flame top.

Maye I got a lemon, or maybe the quality has dropped in the last couple of years, I don't really know. As Ben Gibbard sang: "I hope you have more luck with this then me".

Worth much more..

Right off the bat, I'll say that the fret ends on this guitar are quite bad. However, at this price range you can only expect this.

The pickups, fretboard, feel, and overall quality otherwise is quite good. Worth much more than what you are paying for.

Great T-style guitar!

Not only is it beautiful to look at but also sounds great with these P90 pu's!