Here is my review of the HB35 Vintage black :
First of all, a big thanks and heads up for the very good service of the Thomann customer service.
The chat service works great and they are very helpful.
I Ordered the package with the case included and it arrived in a split shipment a few days after the purchase.
Ordered Wednesday, received the case on Friday and the guitar the week after on Monday.
The only complaint I have on the delivery is the fact they are using UPS.
I don’t have very good experiences with UPS, I have much better experiences with other delivery companies like DHL, Post NL, …
If I had the choice I’d certainly would choose another company for the shipment.
Now the guitar :
My first impression when taking it out of the box was very good. Whaw! What a nice guitar, it looked really great!
A quick tuning of the guitar and I was able to test it out. Intonation was almost fine.
After a few more detailed inspections I noticed some minor flaws :
- Some visible wirings in the body
- The attachments from the bridge to the body are protruding from the body (just 1 mm, but still)
- The fretboard was rather dry and needed some lemon oil
- The frets were a little rough and needed a quick polish
- The tuners were OK, (guitar remains nicely in tune) but could be improved (I replaced them with a set of kluson tuners which improved the tuning process)
Some other flaws were a little more annoying :
- When adapting the intonation of the guitar I noticed that the screws in the bridge just move backward out of the bridge instead of changing the intonation. I had to push them back into the bridge with the screwdriver in order to move the bridges in the right place (it worked OK but it is annoying) I ordered a better bridge in the meantime.
- When plugging in the guitar, I noticed that the tone pot of the bridge pickup didn’t work. After fiddling a little bit with the wires inside of the body, the tone pot worked correctly, which makes me suspect that it is an issue of a bad soldering or a short circuit of the wires. Annoying again, but for now it works, so it is OK for me. In worst case, if the issue raises again, I’ll remove the pots to re-solder them or change the faulty pot if required (I guess that Thomann will have no issue sending me a replacement pot if I explain them the situation)
All these small issues make me suppose that the Thomann QC is limited to a quick visual check on big issues and the guitar is most probably not plugged in to test the electronics,
but again, this should probably not be expected for a guitar of 169 euros.
So, as conclusion, despite a few shortcomings, with a little extra investment you can have a great guitar! I am more than happy and satisfied with my purchase and I would not hesitate to by another Harley Benton!