Harley Benton ST-62 BK Vintage Series

First I would like to thank Henning Pauly who did a great job of reviewing this guitar on youtube. If you are considering buying one of these check out his video as well as reading owner reviews.

By way of background, I have owned and played professionally a 70's hardtail Fender Strat, a 90's Strat Ultra and a Tom Anderson hollow drop top Classic. I have sold all of these as I was leaving the UK to work abroad permanently and for the last fourteen years I have been using modelling guitars exclusively for work. Coming up to retirement I decided to build up a collection of guitars for self amusement and have picked up some amazing instruments, many at smile - inducing low prices. The only Strat I had was a Vintage V6 with maple fingerboard which is a worthy instrument but as all my expensive Strats had rosewood or Ebony boards I decided after seeing Henning's video and the pricetag to Give the HB a try.
The bridge and Jack socket plate look cheapish and the scratch plate is sitting proud at the treble horn. The tremelo block looks very thin but I am keeping it hardtail so cannot comment on it's worth. Remember the price and read on. The rosewood board smells strange but I have this on another chinese guitar and once cleaned and oiled it should even out, however the board itself is one of the nicest pieces of rosewood I have seen on a guitar, It goes from dark brown to an almost Rickenbacker orange in a nice marbled style.

Out of the box the guitar plays beautifully and sounds like a Strat. The rosewood board is like an old friend to me already. The Wilkinson pickups look like they may be less expensive than the ones on the Vintage guitar but both sound great. The controls work well and I love the pickguard which is almost flame like and on arrival there was a double layer of protective plastic covering it! The neck is poly coated but still really smooth under your hand. I love the weight and at 3.3 Kg it is one of the lightest and most comfortable guitars I have played on a strap. It sounds and plays better than my 70's Strat, sounds more Strat like than my Ultra with Lace Sensors and while not as good or flexible as the Tom Anderson, it didn't cost two and a half Grand!!! I would be perfectly happy using this instrument live!

Summing up, anyone who plays guitar and is looking for a Strat-a-like has an incredible range af makes and prices to choose from but unless you are looking for a unit with a quality Tremolo Bridge for dive bombing you should give it a try and if you don't like it, at this price hang it on a wall as decoration.

I was looking for a cheap guitar, which looks fairly good, and plays well. The hardware were not a point as I probably was gonna replace them anyway. I think the most important part of a guitar is the neck, if it's bad, you won't like it. This guitar is the perfect platform. The neck is gorgeous, mine has some really minor dents, but all-in-all it's beautiful color and satin finish with a medium thickness gives it a wonderful feel. 22 frets are also a big plus. I've raised the degree of the neck so that the strings lay flat all the way through. Also raised the vibrato bar and set it up to float, added some graphite to the nut. This guitar is rock solid. It holds tune suprisingly well even with the vintage tuners, it even handles some divebombs if you're not extremly violent. For light vibrato use it's flawless, it holds tune nicely and sounds really good. Again, we're talking about a fully cheap spec guitar. I kid you not, this is on par with the base spec Fender strats. The pickups tho - the neck and mid pickups are really nice, but the bridge pickup lacks bass a lot. It's nice for some overdriven rock tones, but for cleans it's so flat that you would mistake it for a plank. Definitely the pickups are the weak point of this guitar, and also the cheap plastic pickguard and potentiometer knobs, but again, these are things that you can easily replace for higher quality ones.

I'm fully satisfied with this instrument and it quickly became one of my favourite guitars. 10/10 would recommend.

I'm afraid I've become a Harley Benton addict, is the third guitar bought from Thomann.
Until now I bought this: HB SC Custom Lemon Flame, HB TE-70 RW, and the HB ST-62 BK, and the future acquisitions will be HB CST-24T Ocean Flame and HB DC-Custom Cherry.
For the same amount of money, i prefer to buy 5 different HB guitars instead of one guitar from best brands.

Instead of paying more for the brand, i prefer to do some setup like Sam
that the guitar will sound like here
here
to the main subject: no damage in transit, feels, looks and sounds really nice.
The Wilkinson MWSTHA Alnico Vintage singlecoil pickups sounds warm and similar to other more expensive pickups.
The "tortoise" pickguard is beautiful, does not seem to be a printed copy.
This guitar came with good intonation, but high action, so I had to do some setup and tighten truss rod.
The frets need a good polishing cause they are bit rough.
The tuning stability of Kluson-Style tuners is very good.
The only big problem with this guitar is the tremolo, whenever I used the trem bar it went out of tune.
This guitar is a very good option for beginner or a backup guitar for everyone. I'm really impressed with the quality of this guitar for the money.
Great guitar to buy and set up yourself!

Pros: Neck feels good, solid knobs and switches, nice weight, sounds good, paint looks good.

Cons: Neck nut fell out during string change (not glued in and poorly fitted), unable to change lower E string without removing back cover plate as tremolo cut out was very poor (elongated) and back plastic plate was not centered when installed (not sure how they can fix this), frets not smooth (ridges in frets) causing strings to bind while playing, minor fret buzz, fretboard very very dry, excessivly long delivery with poor tracking updates from USPS. If you order one of these don't give up, it will eventually arrive.

Emailed customer care with pictures of defects, still waiting for followup on possible return or replacement.

This is my second guitar from Thomann and I do believe this could be a good guitar if these issues are resolved. After such a long delivery and such good reviews, well I kind of feel cheated.

Honestly, I don't really know how this is possible. I bought this as an alternative to using my Fender American Strat in certain situations, but primarily as a project guitar that I can pull apart and upgrade over the next few years. My original plan was to replace the pickups and machine heads, based on my assumption that it couldn't possibly be decent at this price point. Having received it, let it settle for a few days and having had a good look over it, I have to admit that it is such a brilliant buy. I used it live last night for the first time and everyone was amazed at the tone and the fit and finish. The neck feels great (still going to sand the lacquer off though) and it held its tune on a par with the other more expensive guitars on stage. Honestly, this is the ideal guitar for everyone - a brilliant starter guitar (for the same price as the 'Rockwood' I bought over 20 years ago) and an excellent backup/base for a project. I suspect that i'll be buying more of these :)