Harley Benton TE-40 TBK Deluxe Series

Not a bad guitar but let down by poor quality control and worse after sales service from Thomann.

I already own several guitars but I wanted a cheap guitar to keep downstairs as my toddler has recently been taking an interest in them and I did not want to risk her knocking over one of my more expensive ones.

Pros:
Mine has a nice fast neck which I was very impressed with for the money. It came with setup with a low action and intonation set correctly. The guitar sounds OK, its not as good as my Fender Telecaster (with a HSS configuration) but the Fenders a more expensive guitar so to be expected. Pick ups were not set up particularly well but I can adjust them myself.

Cons:
Came with corroded strings. Thomann make a point of advertising this guitar with having a quality brand of strings but as they are in poor condition its miss selling them.

Frets were also corroded, these can be polished out when you change the strings but it shouldn't be needed on a brand new guitar from their "A" stock.

Volume and tone pots also have corrosion on them.

Switch has colour corrosion.

Strap buttons also corroded.

There was a blob of paint or filler on the fret board from a botched repair.

Paint/stain mark on neck under finish.

Neutral:
A note on guitar colour. The pictures make the guitar look like its a gloss black. The top is in fact some sort of visible wood grain effect (i suspect a print of some kind) with a dark varnish over the top. Its quite attractive but more of a dark brown than the black I expected. Personally I don't mind it, but something to be aware of if you wanted a solid black gloss colour.

TERRIBLE SLOW SERVICE after sales from Thomann.:
I emailed Thomann to ask them about the corroded strings and corroded hardware. It took over 5 days for them to reply to the email and I gave up waiting for a reply to my return email after about another 5 days. I phoned them instead to ask why they were not responding. The lady I spoke to thankfully got a response from their parts department by the next day. Which was much better. However, there is no excuse for not replying to emails in a reasonable time. The parts department replied quote "The guitars department told us that a replacement looks the same as for this price range everything is okay." They are basically saying that corroded parts are normal and acceptable on guitars from Thomann. Pretty disgusting. Ive brought many guitars over the years of varying prices and have never before received one that had corroded hardware on a brand new guitar. I can only imagine their "B" stock guitars must look like they've been run over by a truck or something , if this is normal for an "A" stock guitar. This could have been resolved by sending me 12 euros worth of parts that they advertise as I said I could fix it myself if they sent the replacements. Apparently though they don't have non corroded replacement parts...

I fully realise that on a cheaper guitar you do not expect the playabilty and performance of a high end guitar. I do not expect to be told however that hardware corrosion is okay.

The initial delivery though was quick and flawless. I can only imagine from the positive reviews of Thomann service that they've never dealt with the after sales if there was a problem.

Summary. Good guitar for the money if you are lucky enough to get one that hasn't been stored in a fish tank and don't have to deal with after sales.

Just starting my adventure into electric guitar. This will be an excellent platform to learn on. Sadly, the guitar arrived with only one working pickup at the bridge. The pickup wiring utilizes some questionable connectors. Makes assembly quick, but they are not secure. Came loose again after 10 minutes, then the bridge pickup stopped working for the same reason. Once repaired the sound is wonderfully bright and pleasing. Workmanship on the rest of the guitar is quite good. It required tuning, of course, but the setup and action was good. Very pleased overall, but the initial issues could be a big problem for some people.

The only disappointment for me was that fretboard color was not black. It was not anywhere close to black... It was brown. In every video on youtube I watched about this guitar , the fretboard was clearly black. The pictures on the Thomann website also clearly show that it is black. So when I received a guitar with a brown fretboard I was really disappointed... I was expecting a full black guitar , because it looks so cool.

Another problem I noticed when I was unboxing this guitar was that the tone-knob was bent. Sort of skewed to the side. It is working, but still... How do these things pass the quality check , is a mystery to me.