Harley Benton SC-450Plus VB Vintage Series

jumped on the hype with Harley Benton, wanted to test out for my self if all the hype is indeed true. For most parts I understand the hype and find it hard to get this much guitar at this price point. Many compare it to Epiphone around the 500 - 800 Euro price point a comparison I don't think do the Epiphone justice. The feel and tone of the Harley Benton is not of the Epiphone 2020 inspired by series, which has better components overall, but is also 2.5 times more expensive.
Straight out of the box the SC-450 wasn't perfect, I had to polish the frets, lubricate the fretboard, adjust pickup height, strings and do an intonation of the guitar.
The volume pot for neck pickup was faulty, rolling to zero didn't turn off the guitar. Thomann quickly returned 50 euro for this mistake, which I'm happy with.
The guitar doesn't stay in tune that well, which I believe is down to the plastic nut.
The Roswell pickups are what they are, the bridge is bright and sound pretty good. The neck is too dark and muddy for my taste (sounds good coil splitted though).
I'm going to replace all electronics with better quality and replace the nut with a graphtech.
The pickups will probably also be replaced with Seymour Duncan JB/Jazz.

Overall build quality is good, nothing to point a finger at.

Seems like alot of negative for this guitar, but for a pricepoint of 160 euroes you get an excellent platform for personalizing a guitar. For beginners I'm sure this guitar will bring a lot of joy and excitement for years to come.

I had heard very good things about this guitar on youtube and through the reviews but I am positively dissapointed.

Although the guitar has a great tone there is a lot of work to be done of it in order that I can have fun playing it and keep wanting to pick up. For now my Yamaha pacifica V212 gets the upper hand every time because of the fact that:

* It's intonationed properly.
* The frets are correctly leveled.
* Low action and easy to play

All of these things are missing on the Harley Benton SC-450.

Negatives:

When I first got it out of the box, the pickup switches plate immediately fell off. I thought, alright, not a good sign but easy fix, and screwed it back on.

There is also a slight twist in the neck, it's not very much (not as bad as my Harley Benton ST-62 which I decided to send back, I'm still undecided on this one) but it's there.

The guitar is not intonated properly, and there are a lot of uneven frets that need leveling.

One of the pickups are not properly mounted and moves around if you touch it.

Positive:
This guitar has decently low action .

I really like having the option to coil split, just for the fun of it.

It sounds good and is was very fun to play until the faults become too much to overlook.

I don't recommend getting this guitar unless you are ready to put extra time into correcting the mistakes made in production. It's very unfortunate because the price of getting it fixed by a luthier is as much, if not more than what the guitar costs. There is atleast 2-3 hours worth of work needed on this guitar for it be playable, which is very sad considering that someone took the pride to put a tag with their name on it on this guitar (I wish I had kept it so I could put his name here, because he really did a terrible job on both my HB guitars).

But if this is what you want, I would recommend this guitar. Otherwise, be very strict in your notes when you order it of how you want it setup and perhaps they will do it to save the pain of having another guitar sent back.

Brilliant guitar at this price. My one was only let down by the tuning machines, with some being very difficult or jumping that makes tuning possible but not easy. Suggest you budget for another set, but even with that cost added still a good value guitar that could cost you twice as much elsewhere or possibly even more. (You can also contact Thomann's good Customer Service who will always try to resolve.)

The Roswell pickups are good and should not regarded as a no name low quality as they are not. Certainly here in the UK they are available from some dealers as an aftermarket replacement. From what I can determine Roswell have been making pickups for other brands for a number of years and have only in recent years decided to market under their own brand. The only thing is whether the type of music you play fits well with these pickups. I think most who likes blues, classic or hard rock, etc or like me plays a bit of easy jazz as well will. However not being a shredder a thrash metal player cannot comment on that aspect. Having had to, over the decades, coil tap/split my guitars that is an additional benefit these days on many guitars including this one.

The fretboard was well finished, no fret sprout with good intonation out of the box. The fret ends were nicely finished.
Yes they could be more rounded and polished, thouhg that is more of a personal preference than requirement, but they don't catch your hands. The neck for me was great; not being too thick or too narrow. The neck was also straight and did not require any truss rod adjustment. Not a big job if required but nice when you don't have to, particularly if you were a new player and don't have the experience. The nut looks plastic as a lot of low to medium price guitars are these days though it does the job well. If you want you can always buy a bone, graphite, Tusq, etc and replace it. Or you could just buy a much more expensive guitar but that would appear to be an overkill just to get a preferred nut.

The bridge and stop tail piece are chrome plated cast, and do their job well. They are much better than some I have seen on less expensive guitars over the years.

Overall a good instrument and I will have no hesitation in buying one of the other Harley Benton guitars especially at the prices that they are offered at. However if you are looking for a high resale price then you are unlikely to ever get that with a HB guitar, but if looking for a good instrument that will last and be good got gigging then look no further. If you are into brand status along with a good resale price then look elsewhere and expect to pay a hell of a lot more.

First of all, the reference pictures don't show how beautiful this guitar looks like in real life. Worth the money just for the looks already.
Pretty much arrived "ready to play" out of the box. Just tune up, plug it in and you will have a really nice piece to start with.

A few notes and thoughts:

Overall construction: A bit on the heavier side, but nothing too much. Everything is put together well and no obvious flaws on the paintjob or binding. The pickguard was a bit loose, but that's fixed simply by tightening the screw.

Pickups and the sound: Rosewell Alnico 5's sound great. Nothing bad about them to be honest (might replace them later on but that's a personal preference pretty much). All I had to do was adjust the pickup heights to my liking. Coil tap is a nice feature.

The neck: This is why I'm rating it only for 3* for quality. Don't get me wrong, for the money you get an absolute unit but just to be brutally honest, there are some minor issues that can be taken care of from the QC department. First of all, the frets were not polished at all - very grindy when bending the strings. This I fixed with some 0000 steel wool and general polishing. Secondly the fret ends around the 15th fret and upwards were quite sharp. Fixed by filing and sanding. It seemed like someone had already tried to file the frets around that area, as the binding on the fingerboard is a little bit damaged. Fortunately it's on the bottom side, so it doesn't bother me.
HB SC-Custom I bought a year ago had perfect frets for example. Might just have been the case of QC rushing with the guitars during the holiday season..

Tuners and tuning in general: The guitar seems to hold it's tuning quite well, tuners are tight and not slipping in any way.


Overall it's a amazingly great instrument for the price. After polishing the frets, dealing with with the sharp ends around 15'th fret and changing the strings (obvious first job for any guitar) it's something that well deserves a place in my collection. That's actually already 3'rd Harley Benton guitar for me and definitely not the last one.