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Harley Benton Guitars
I have a few mid-range guitars, but have never been tempted to look at the lowest priced guitars as my experience has been that they have all been poor quality.
For a while I have been seeing reviews of Harley Benton guitars and the consensus seems to be that they are far better than expected for the price.
In particular, I subscribe to Darrell Braun’s guitar channel (check it out!), and he has bought a few and been extremely impressed by what you get for the money, and this is from a guy who owns a lot of expensive guitars.
Anyway, I thought I’d roll the dice and ordered an HB-35 Plus, which is a Gibson ES-335 clone. The wait times to get them are long, but it will be a nice surprise when it arrives.
Anyone have any experience with them?
Comments
We used to take them in on part-exchange in the guitar shop I worked in. Each one we had was really good quality for the price. The build, finish, playability and tone were all great. I think you will be happy when it arrives. It’d be good to hear what you think when it comes.
Every YouTube video I have seen has people surprised at how good they are for the price.
I was a little skeptical at first as the company is owned by Thomann, a German music store, and that instantly made me think of Guitar Center in the US launching their own brand - Rogue guitars - which are extremely poor quality and not worth any price. Seems like Thomann has a very different outlook on launching their own brand of guitars.
I have personal experience with 2 pieces of acoustic Harley Benton GS (E) Travel. I didn't have to adjust anything, I basically just change the strings from time to time.
It’s bizarre that such low-priced guitars are built so well and get such good reviews.
i have a Harley Benton bass, incredible for the money but it doesn't make me want to play it like other basses that indeed cost more money. It's all down to price and requirement.
it's amazing they exist and I'm grateful, but it also depends on the level of instrument you demand.
There are a few different makers of guitars like the HB, Eart guitars, M Musi guitars all have great neck and fret work as well as so so finishes. you dont get these low prices without some components suffering, electrics and switching are cheapo as are the tuners, nut bridge BUT if you are fine with cheaper parts any of these can be great guitars for you
I got this HSH Fusion a year ago. I lowered the strings a little and that’s all. Plays better than my Tele and my Strat, so I bought a Harley Jazz Bass too.
Out of interest, what is their trem system like?
It doesn't surprise me all that much.
I'm in the process of building my second acoustic guitar the old-school way. But as I learn more about the technology such as CNC routers, etc. available for not really all that much money, I can see how an even modest initial investment can be leveraged into rapid, inexpensive, repeatable, and extremely accurate results. It doesn't surprise me at all that extremely high quality guitars can be produced inexpensively these days, even in a home shop.
Brands like Taylor established their high-end pricing credentials when it still had to be a labor intensive process. It no longer needs to be, and the results can far exceed what even the most skilled luthier can achieve. Materials cost for a $7,000 Taylor model are much less than $500 even at non bulk purchase pricing. Labor is far less than you would think. A reasonably equipped home shop could repeated bang out something identical and of equal quality for well under $1,000. Well under $500 for very, very good quality materials.
Which is a little discouraging for my efforts. 😂
But it's about the fun of the journey (or so I keep telling myself!).
It’s a traditional Wilkinson 50llk vibrato system trem bar. Nothing fancy. I unscrewed my bar, I don’t play that way.
I bought my wife a lefty p-bass to learn on. It was about £110. Beyond impressed. When it arrived it was the closest to perfect setup I’ve had out the box! I’m talking practically perfect intonation, smooth fret ends, the lot.
It’s £110 bass. I wasn’t expecting much. I nearly bought myself one of their musicman copy. I have no real use for a MM, it doesn’t suit what I do & I never gelled with the music man I had. (Original sub, the USA made ones.) But at £100 I’ve spent more on pedals.
My mate who’s a guitarist bought a J bass for demos and he loves it. It sounds pretty good on his recordings too.
Aside from environmental changes, There's really no reason why even an inexpensive instrument can't arrive perfectly setup any more. Everything can be manufactured to extreme accuracy with moderately priced. For the shop that doesn't have such, it's easy to purchase things like pre-slotted and radiused fretboards for very little - $20-30 one-off cost from a well-known supplier not known for their low pricing. $20 or less with fret marker inlays one-off cost from China.
The most significant expense these days is any electronics. That can easily more than double the cost of an acoustic. Far less for an electric.
(btw, fretwork isn't really all that hard. I was highly intimidated about it until I actually did it. It was one of the easiest parts of the build. I did "cheat" with a pre-slotted and radiused fingerboard though ... the only concession I made though.)
I think what really surprises me is how much trash was on the market, even just a few years back. God knows how brands like Dean got established when their guitars were little more than some low quality strings stretched across some cheap lumber.
I bought my first electric in 1981, which was a dirt cheap made in Japan strat clone. The pickups weren’t great, but after converting it to a fat strat and replacing the other pickups it served me well for years. Since then I have probably played a hundred or more guitars, and once production in Japan became expensive and other countries started mass producing guitars many of those were truly terrible. About 25 years ago I bought my first mandolin from Musicians Friend - their own ‘Rogue’ brand, and it made me want to not learn until I bought an Ibanez model that was actually playable. I played a couple of other Rogue guitars and they were both badly made and not fixable.
China was looked down upon for guitar building (for good reason!), but that definitely seems to have changed.
Good luck with the guitar build.
Yeah it’s always the electrics I see where they saved the money, sometimes hardware. Best example I have, I bought a contemporary squire strat last year. I sent the first back cos it went on sale and I’d have been daft not to (it had some minor cosmetic & trem issues.) The second one also had a few blemishes to the finish, but not so much I’d care to send it back.
On both the roasted maple neck was gorgeous, tuners great, fret ends smooth. Lovely guitars but the pickups are just meh. I’ll get around to swapping them out, biggest issue I had was a loose connector switch on my player duo-sonic out the box! (Looking at forums, not exactly uncommon for them 😮)
I got a Donner 2 humbucker telecaster on Amazon 2 months ago and it’s a solid guitar (ok, well, actually it’s semi-hollow!). I replaced the pickups with guitar madness pickups ($30) and the tuners with cheap locking tuners ($30), because I’m a bassist and can’t really get the hang of restringing a guitar… also better bridge saddles ($10). Still less than $200 all told and it works really well.
One thing that’s made it much better is that I’ve been inspired to practice guitar more and learn more than “cowboy chords” so I can write better.
Inexpensive guitars are pretty amazing now.
Squiers have improved a lot too. The low end ones would vary in quality a lot depending on who was making them that particular week, but they are made pretty well now. I have a Squier P-Bass Special that I upgraded the pickups and bridge on, and it’s a really solid instrument now.
I do have high hopes for the Harley Benton I ordered straight out of the box though, so I hope I’m not disappointed.
For the past few years, I've been building guitars from kits -- six of them were from HB. I also bought one of their finished P90 Jaguars (they didn't have the kit available at the time). All perfectly good guitars, lots of fun to play. What you can get for not a lot of cash these days is astounding. CNC machines along with some decent quality control, and you have very modestly priced instruments that rival the big-name stuff. Firefly has also gotten a lot of positive buzz, but I have not played one of those.
With the kits, I'm averaging about $120 per guitar, kit price plus the materials for finishing. Tons of fun to paint and build these things. I just finished my 20th kit, and I've got eight more stacked up, waiting for a build. I could probably use an intervention.
Here's a couple of the recent builds. The Strat was about $100 (including a triple-humbucker pickguard from Amazon), while the Explorer was a bit pricier at $220. Fun stuff.
There are several Asian factories that have gotten very good. Partly because big US brands are very happy to sell a high-volume of outsourced, lower-margin guitars. So they pushed the outsourcers to get better. Harley Benton themselves have probably also been part of helping some factories improve. That then opened the door for lots of smaller brands to use those same outsourcers.
Could I ask you for details/link? One of my guitars definitely deserves new tuners.
That’s certainly what I recall for other brands too, particularly Squier as they changed factories and eventually got some consistency in their builds. I would imagine Chinese factories have no choice but to produce good quality now or they will soon be out of business to a neighboring factory.
Nice builds! I love that you put your logo on the headstocks. I built a Solo guitars tele kit last year and while it looks nice and plays reasonably well I find it uninspiring and I rarely pick it up. Cheap tuners + cheap pickups + poor neck profile = zero mojo.
Sure, I’m happy to share!
https://a.co/d/bQJB7Xh
They’re not hip shot tuners for sure but they work pretty well, the guitar gets in tune and stays in tune. There’s a little bit of slack when you turn the gear at first, but nothing that gets in the way of tuning and they do turn smoothly as they turn.
Thank you!
@wim Thomann music who sells Harley Benton does set ups on their guitars for less than half of market value.I think they set ours up when we bought it for $38 …