Harley Benton ST-Junior BK Standard Series

Out of the box all very well packed in bubblewrap etc. Very nice finish. Intonation was very bad, hopelessly out of tune on 5th fret and sound pretty yuk. Changed the strings to my favourite ones (electric guitar 0.010 top) and hey-presto - as near perfect as I can tell! Lovely bright sound well balanced across all 6 strings with no need to adjust pups height. I lowered the action by one turn per string at bridge/saddle (my personal preference for action) and gave a small tweak on bridge intonation screws - got the octave perfect and string to string at 5th fret, well as near as I can hear. Don't touch the truss rod - looks properly set for fret board bow. I play through a Fender 25 bass amp (10 inch) to get nice sound. Don't expect same through cheap battery amp with 3 inch speaker, I've tried. I'm talking proper clean tones here, much more demanding than distorted. Tuned to A low i.e. same as normal guitar with capo on 5th fret, hence just use normal guitar strings. The 5 position switch works as standard strat with positions 2 and 4 giving some of that fender twang and also hum cancelling, so I assume the middle pup is reverse wound/polarity as it should be. One result of small size is that pups are close together so not so much differentiation of tone /sound as on a full size. Came with free jack lead. Just remember that like any (single coil) guitar the pick up height affects the tone, I prefer my pickups very low for a more mellow tone.

I bought this mainly to play melody lines of English ceilidh and folk music because the range of first finger position from low A to high C# matches most of all published music books in that genre. Hence wanting clean sound. I love it, it's great fun and nicely satisfying for melody lines. Chords sound fine as well to me, but being short scale you have to set your tuning accurately with a proper tuner. And for the price its amazing, and fine for me, then again - I'm not a pro. I don't see this as just a child's instrument. My star ratings apply after string change.

I brought this as a presnet for my daughter and for the money I really wasn't expecting much. But I build guitars and do set-ups so all I really needed was a base for future improvements

On openign the vbox i was pleasantly surprised. The guitar arrived and was playable out of the box. It tuned up nicely and starting holding its tunign well after a good stretching of the strings. the action was about 2.5mm at the 12th fret and was playing buzz free. I lowered this to 2mm and it was still buzz free. I have played a lot of expensive guitars which can't say the same!!!

It weighed 5lb 2oz which is still a little heavy for my daughter, but she is only 3 and already enjoys having this on her lap and strumming it whilst I play my full size guitars. tbh I will be playing it myself sometimes as its perfectly acecptable as a real instrument

When i plugged this one in the bridge pickup was noticeably lower volume. they are all set to the same height which may be contributing to this but when I checked DC resistance the real reason became clear. bridge is 4.3k, middle is 5.2, neck is 4.7. they could be evened out in volume with height adjustment but they do work as they are and are relatively inoffensive. ( usually pay 3-5 times the price of this guitar for a single pickup!! I am a pickup snob)

The edges of the fretboard of the fretboard rolled and feels comfy as a result. the maple is also flatsawn as it should be and is covered in a really thin lacquer - actually much nicer than a heavy gloss finish. it feels sleek. It seems to have had dye on the rosewood board. firstly the dots are very dark, secondly there is a noticeable colour difference between the bare rosewood and lacquered side. but it is real rosewood and even the big name manufacturers use dye on a fretboard occasionally - I was more surprised they had bothered on such a cheap guitar

Obviously I am a tinkerer and have taken the guitar apart. Everything was as it should be. It has a large swimming pool route under the guard which will fit most types of pickups. It is clear from the neck pocket that the solid wood body is more of a blockboard style with strips of wood topped with a cap. I am fine with this for a cheap guitar. Its a style of construction used on much more expensive things such as mexican fenders. It is preferable to the heavy ply some min guitars are made from

So a bit ago, I needed a guitar for traveling around. Nothing special, nothing very good and nothing better than my real guitars. Just a small version to jam and to play when not being able to take my normal guitars with me.

There are several small guitars on the market and there are also "traveling" guitars. Really exciting :-)

But I chose this one. Because:
It's very cheap! So should happen anything to this guitar, it is not neccessary! :-)

The amplified sound is not very very good, but it's also not that bad! It's ok! Better than I had expected :-)

For children or somebody with really small hands it could really be the first guitar!

For my traveling issues - it's perfect.

Quality is also just 'ok' - but hey, it's cheap! And for the price well worth!!

Cool guitar :-)

I got this guitar for one of my cousins; he is 12 and wanted to start playing electric guitar after he heard me doodle on mine.

The guitar stays in tune fairly well; the action was not great, but it's playable out of the gate. There were no frets sticking out or anything like that, but with the strings the guitar came with, I would instantly get rid of them and place a decent pair on it, and it made a huge difference in the sound. The knobs and the volume switch feel kind of loose, but they do their job.

I would totally recommend this to a kid or someone that isn't sure if he is going to stick with the instrument and just get a feel for it and eventually move to a better instrument, but for the price, you couldn't ask for more.

Bought this guitar for my granddaughter. The reviews were pretty good so I thought this should be a good value. Took the guitar out of the box and it seemed all fine. Tuned it up and strummed a chord. Horrible! Perhaps the strings needed a little stretching. Again, tuned it, strummed a chord. Horribly not in tune. Got out my chromatic tuner. Tuned it up and checked the note on the second fret and every string was sharp between 18 and 38 cents. That's a LOT! This is the first time I've ever experienced this bad of fret intonation - or lack of! Perhaps I got a lemon. Or perhaps quality and quality control on Harley Benton has gone down. Based on the guitar I received, I recommend staying away from this one!

I got this for my kids to play around with - they often want to play on the "'tar" while Daddy is playing on his guitar ;-). It was cheap and the reviews seemed generally positive. So even if it wasn't that great it'd fit the brief of being a guitar that a 4 and 7 year old could play with.

So what did I find when I opened the box?
- The woodworking is decent - the neck is lovely - smooth & straight, the fretwork is good as well (no sharp ends that I could find), the body to neck join tight and the finish on the body is good as well.
- It had a decent setup on it - there's barely any fret buzz.
- It's tunable (I started in A-D-G-C-E-G and then moved to G-D-G-B-D-G), but it's fiddly. Partly that's because the short scale means the strings are more sensitive but it's also down to the tuners which have a bit of backlash in them. It'll be interesting to see how well it stays in tune.
- The three pickups definitely produce different sounds. Overall the resulting sound is a bit rough to my ears - there's a lack of smoothness & a lack of high-end but it's more than adequate.
- The tone control doesn't do a lot - but that's not particularly important to me.

Overall it's amazing value for the money!