Harley Benton ST-70RW Deluxe Series

GREAT
The biggest surprise on this guitar is how good the pickups sound. I've previously used Seymour Duncan, Dimazio, Kent Armstrong etc as well as countless OEM rubbish and these Wilkinsons are of Seymour Duncan quality. Proper alnico slugs, quiet, nicely bright and clear but with a dark poke when needed. Hank Marvin to Yngwie at the flick of a dirt pedal. No need to upgrade!

The Trem is also a quality Wilkinson unit with a HUGE inertia block. Very solid sound, returns to pitch every time (once I'd set it up, see below). Wish the grub screws had smoother tops, though!

The body is solid basswood as advertised, not plywood as is common at entry-level price. Well finished with high quality routing that fit the pickups snuggly - i.e. no horrible 'swimming pool' gap under the pickguard! Rosewood laminate looks great in the flesh and the headstock is immaculate.

GOOD
The tuners work and look ok. Electrics are all 250k pots, no noise and smooth travel. Tone pots are the usual exponential taper so only really work over a small part of their travel, which is normal but could be upgraded. Neck is a chunky thick-ish D profile with big frets. Didn't hold its tuning AT ALL at first, but settled down once I stretched the brand new strings.

Action as supplied was stupidly high, brought it down (using supplied tools) to almost fret-level and there's no buzz at all. Very impressive.

BAD
Action as supplied is absurdly high (as above), trem screwed back tight against the body. Easy enough to adjust it all so it plays beautifully, though, so I've this is your first guitar then look on YouTube on how to do basic setups to get the best out of it. Fret board was dry and some ugly dye spillage was visible. I removed the strings and rubbed it down lightly, then applied Lemon Oil for a smoother, uniform appearance. Still has the 'open' texture of rosewood but no longer feels like I'm playing on a stick I just picked up in a forest.

UGLY
Frets had slightly sharp ends in the upper octave, I fixed it with a small file, didn't take much work. Worse is that the frets don't feel like they've been crowned completely, leaving a very 'scratchy' feel when bending strings. I don't have a crowning file so I'm going to play it for a few months to see if it fixes itself. Real shame, but not a deal breaker.

Whereas the hardware is mostly of decent quality, the jackplate has some bubbling on the chrome plating - yuk!


SUMMING UP
The high quality of the pickups, trem and body/neck materials mean that this guitar sound amazing - easily as good as Mex Fenders costing several times the asking price.

The poor finish to the frets is a disappointment and, initially, makes it feel like the entry-level guitar it is. With an hours work, however, it's starting to play and feel much more like a decent instrument.

It's now hanging on my wall between a Gibson Les Paul and a high-end Ibanez and its currently my guitar of choice, just because it sounds EXACTLY like a great Strat should sound. I don't care about the name on the headstock.

Upgrade-wise: I might get a Teflon-type nut and some roller string trees to help with the tuning (ok as is, but I like using the trem). I'll replace the tone controls with a master tone pot using a spare Fender Delta Tone I've got laying around, just to open them out a bit. Maybe add an active boost on the other pot. And I've already replaced the big chrome scratchplate screws with small-head black ones, just to make it look that tiny bit more badass. And I need to change that crappy bubbled jackplate for a black one.

I'm probably being hard on a £125 guitar here - it sounds like a £600 guitar and soon it'll play like one!

Having looked at all the Harley Benton strats here at Thomann I opted for this model because it had Wilkinson Alnico vintage ST-style singlecoil pickups and a Wilkinson tremolo.

Having paid only £106 for the guitar i am so glad i bought it. It only took 3 days to arrive here in the UK and it was well packaged. It came with a guitar lead and allen keys and tremolo arm. As this model was only released in Feb 2015, it had no review's or ratings. I presume i must have been the first person to have purchased this model.

There were no flaws on the guitar at all and the finish was a perfect natural (hi-gloss) very impressed! The protective sticky plastic was a bit tricky to remove from around the pickguard and pickup's but having removed the volume and 2 tone nobs made things easier. It already had a nice low action straight out of the box and i am pleased to say i had no fret buzz whatsoever. I did need to tune it myself but it was pretty well tuned out of the box.

I have two Les Paul guitar's already and bought this Harley Benton Strat ONLY to play "The Shadows" music so i wanted a good reliable tremolo which seem's to work very well indeed and appear's to stay in tune so far.

The Wilkinson pickup's have a nice warm tone and don't sound cheap and nasty.
For the price this guitar is well worth the money! I could not be happier!
Good quality Guitar! I hope this review is of some help for anyone else thinking of buying this model and i am astonished that i have guitar of this quality for £106
I have bought £400 guitars and the HB ST-70 is up there with them and just as good when comparing sound and quality.

Thankyou Thomann. I hope to buy from you again.

I have a number of styles of guitar but was missing a standard ST style guitar (S-S-S pick-ups). I looked at the options and decided to take a punt on this guitar as I figured it couldn't hurt as it could be a good modding platform if it needed work.

It arrived quickly (to the UK) and was well pacakaged as usual. Thanks!

Right out of the box is was giving me the tones that my existing options were missing and to top it off was very comfortable to play. It gives all the ST options I wanted (e.g. quack, bite etc) and slotted very neatly into my collection.

It is a strange thing comparing guitars as they all sound different and perform differently in varying situations - so there is no way to directly compare them... but I feel no lack in quality or tone if I pick this up after using my F-tele, F-mustang, Gib-335 or Gret-Pro Jet.

I definitely recommend this guitar unless you feel you HAVE to have the correct shape headstock and name.

Disclaimer: I may be a bit of a perfectionist and very demanding.

I heard all the rave about the Harley Bentons and decided to buy this one.

So, here we go:

- Sound was merely meh.

- It seems like absolutely all parts are completely unoriginal, so at best you can swap knobs.

- It hums, which was not unexpected, as most guitars do (especially single coils).

- Obviously, pickguard has unoriginal screw holes and other things. You can't even change pickup covers to Fender originals, as the Wilkinsons are much too small. Speaking of pickups, one of them just completely broke apart at one of the screws, which was 100% not my doing. The pickup had a chip on the middle as well, so it seems it was damaged beforehand as well. It looks to me like the plastic plate the pickup was mounted on was malproduced, as it has lines (air bubbles?) in it. Also, they didn't even bother to spend 5 seconds of fine sanding the edges on the pickguard cut edge.

- Screws here and there are uneven. Tremolo tilts 1 or 2 millimeter lower on one side (pictures of all Harley Benton do not have this). So not surgical precision when drilling and mounting during production.

- Neck was nice, but even that was hardly perfect. No sharp frets or anything, but fret job still didn't look nice. A small chip is missing in the fretboard near the nut at top, and there is glue on one side of the nut, while there is missing glue on the other side, leaving a tiny, visible gap. Tuners seem like they can't hold tune, but that may just be the fresh strings playing in.

- Sure, it is cheap. Just know that in this case, as usual, you get what you pay for. It may be better quality than regulars at this price, but it is not perfect and not completely professional and top quality.

Stupid me (I'm always so impatient), I took off the labels and plastic right away, so I probably can't return it. Oh well...

Conclusion: I wish I never bought it.

HOWEVER, if I had the chance to view the product beforehand in a store (and find one that is in proper mint condition), I would not regret it like now.
In other words, if I could go over it in the store, even if just to rule out the cosmetic things like the neck flaws, offset screws, and slightly out of whack assembly here and there, I would probably buy it.
The guitar body and neck - if in mint condition, that is - would be a nice basis for a project.

I was initially quite skeptical about buying a guitar online without playing it first and this proved to be well founded. When the guitar arrived, I was excited to get my hands on it and to see what it could do.

First impressions weren't bad - the finish on the body was ok for the money and the chrome hardware looked good. Playing-wise I noticed the action was set a bit higher than I would have liked and on inspecting the neck/fretboard I found out why. The finishing on the fret ends were very poor and a couple of the frets at the lower end were sitting too high making a lower action impossible without fret buzz.

On the plus side, the guitar did stay in tune very well even with some tremelo playing and the pickups provided some excellent tones.

However, overall I am disappointed as having read previous reviews I thought you could get a bargain at this price point, but the quality of the neck and fretboard have confirmed my initial fears - "buy cheap - buy twice" and the guitar has been returned.

I am a metal guy, I have decided to learn blues and I wanted a cheap but nice guitar next to my seven string. I was happy to see this guitar from the Deluxe series and it did not dissapointed me. Really great single coils, surpised how different sounds you can get of coil splits. The finish is very nice, fret ands are not sharp, not cutting (as I have read on some other Harley Benton reviews), tuners are holding great, not de-tuned after a week of not using the guitar. Tremolo could be better, but thats due the .10 string set is too thick, IMHO. Probably a .09 set would fit the guitar better. Anyhow, I can recommend this instrument for anybody for a single coil strat guitar!