Harley Benton ST-59HM Fiesta Red

With the ST-59HM, you get a quality instrument at a great price! It plays and sounds great. Expected some minor, inconsequential flaws at that price and was pleasantly surprised when I found none! I use it for playing at home with headphones, as well as amps. With the great prices, it is good way to acquire a number of guitar types for variety and not break the bank. I am extremely pleased with this purchase.

Everything works as expected. The gold tuners work well and look terrific. The nut is much better than some of the other Harley Bentons I own, with no sharp edges. The frets are smooth in all aspects and didn't need to have them worn in when bending strings at any of the frets. I like the pickups. They sound good enough and give you the basic tone one would expect with this style guitar. It's fun to play and I pick it up to play all the time. All the knobs and switches are good and work as expected.

pros - I literally loved every aspect of the guitar. Looks great, comfortable to play with nice sound. A shout out to their customer service too. I changed my orders a number of times for various reasons and they handled every change I wanted perfectly. I really appreciated their flexibility. If you are in the US it will take a day or so for them to get back to you these days.

cons - None really. Only concern is that if you are having it shipped to the US during the pandemic, it is going to take a while, figure 2-3 weeks. This falls on the shipping companies, not Thomann. From tracking it, it sits at the airport for a week or two
and then when it gets to the US, it gets shipped to Chicago more often than not in my case, and the USPS has taken as long as 2 weeks to get to NY. The one order that got sent to NY (by luck), 25 minutes from my house, sat there for days and ended up taking a week once it got moving. All of this is expected in these times, but it is frustrating to not see it making any progress, staying in the same place so long. I've had an order prior to the pandemic and it was a little more than a week, basically what they promised. Other shipping concerns are the outside box can take a beating. When it arrives, panic might start to set in, but the packaging inside is great with no concerns. Even when the outside box look damaged, rest easy, the inside boxes that actually hold the guitar are impeccable and strong.

Lovely guitar-as well finished as my Fiesta Red Stratocaster, low playing action, good Strat sound from pickups ( always an option to change if you want to later)-and very well packaged. Still in tune despite the trip from Germany! The only slight quibble I have is that having made a Hank Marvin tribute guitar, with the gold-plated fittings etc.,HB didn't quite get the Fiesta Red match right. Compared with my own Fiesta Red Stratocaster it is slightly too red rather than that slightly faded pinky-red of Fiesta Red. I could respray, but the finish is so good, it would be daft to do anything other than leave well alone. Highly recommended.
An update 9 months on. Guitar still excellent, and holding tune even when not used for a few weeks ( I have 14 others....).One thing I did do was change the very good supplied pickups for Fender 57/62 single coils, and the sound is now indistinquishable from my Fender Classic player Strat. the only difference I can feel is the the Harley has a v-shaped neck-something i had not really cottoned on to until recently. Takes a bit of adjusting to after the c neck of most of my Strats, but it cerainly aids chord-playing. Still highly recommended, and well-worth upgarding to better pickups.

I last purchased a guitar some 7 years ago (the thing was unplayable out of the box), it cost maybe 5x what the ST59HM did. I wasn't sure what to expect at this price range.

Apart from a slight blemish around the neck pocket, the finish was flawless. The Fiesta red colour looks pretty authentic to me, in general the attention to detail is very pleasing.

My experience here tells me that this would be an ideal guitar for a beginner as all that was needed in order to start cranking out some Hank Marvin stuff was a slight tuning.

An experienced enthusiast on a tight budget would love this guitar, spending a little time, no sophisticated luthier tools to end up with a guitar that looks and feels more expensive than it is.

Starting with the neck relief, it just needed a slight loosening of the truss rod, I went with .009 inches at the 8th fret based on the radius, the truss rod seemed nice and smooth.

The vibrato plate was flat against the body out of the box, I wanted it to float a little, that trick with 'Post It' notes in combination with a small amount of adjustment to tension of the springs got my desired 1/8th inch vibrato plate height above the body easily.

A little string height adjustment was needed, 2mm and 1.5mm was easy to achieve on the bass and treble sides respectively, although I've had to order some shorter grub screws as the stock ones protrude too much with the lower saddles.

The intonation was pretty much spot on out of the box, just the high E string being a little sharp.

The frets feel comfortable, no sharpness encountered at all, I gave the frets a good polish and lubricated the the nut etc. (I lost the high E string during the process, a replacement set of 10-46 strings ensured the previous changes were unaffected) Other than that there's nothing else that needs doing with this guitar.

The ST59HM is the least expensive in my collection, but could well end up one of my most played guitars.

It is a wonderful guitar, playable, clean & crystal sound.
5 pickup position you can find useful sound,
I really love the Alder body, not too heavy and belance sound.

cons- few minor cons you have to know before buy

1. there's a pit hole at guitar back body, maybe caused by hitting I watch other people bought this guitar have the same problem,
it is not a problem for me, but depend on you

2. You have to do some minor adjust ,
it is fair you buy a quality guitar online at low price, so you have to learn to adjust string action , neck curve for your playing style, I strongly recommend you buy a guitar gauge and tool set

3. the maple fretboard is super smooth and beautiful, but it is too slip~ really too slip...sometimes I can't hold a chord very steady.

Overall it is a wonderful instrument, you won't regret

I bought this guitar to take to performances to save my old Fender from damage and am very impressed with the quality of the finish in all respects. Some minor set up was needed to get a nice floating tremelo. The tremelo arm is more comfortable to use than my fender and tuning stability is very good indeed. The fretboard is a bit flatter radius than a fender STD Strat but not a big issue to me. The bridge pick up is a little harsh and trebly through an amp but is really good for direct recording of Hank guitar tones. Colour and finish is excellent and the Gold Hardware looks great and to date shows no sign of discolouration or pitting. The White single ply scratch plate is the only thing that lets the appearance down and I would upgrade this if changing pickups. The Neck and frets are perfect. I am a delighted customer.

I used this guitar, composing many tracks for a full-length motion picture I am currently working on. The sound with the original pickups is unreal. The Director of the movie said this was one of the best sounding lead guitars he has heard in years. As far as the technical details: The guitar stayed in perfect tune right out of the box. The Rod relief was perfect. The action was awesome (So easy to play!!) The tuners stayed in perfect tune over several weeks. The finish and fit of the body and neck were perfect. I would easily pay six times the Thomann price for this guitar. I do not know how you do it Thomann but keep up the superlative work producing great value instruments. You are now my #1 gear supplier.
You guys rock!
Thanks so much.