The only reason I ever heard of Harley Benton is that I was thinking of buying a Firefly. Fireflies are incredibly cheap guitars that sell for around 180 bucks. The pickups generally suck, but their build quality is usually quite good. I watched a bunch of reviews on Firefly SG copies to determine whether I might use my 180 on better things. I looked through a bunch of budget instrument comparisons and found that one guitar always seemed to beat the Firefly — the obscure-sounding (at least to me) Harley Benton.

Also, I did an update on this guitar nearly one year later, so here’s the link if you want to see what it’s like with some modifications.

Why Would You Buy a Cheap Guitar?

Guitar prices are odd. While you’re sure to land yourself a piece of garbage if your budget is under 100 dollars, spending several thousands of dollars is no guarantee you’ll like your instrument’s feel or performance. Though expensive guitars are generally quality-checked and well-maintained, they can still have defects that temporarily ruin your playing experience.

Extremely expensive guitars like Les Pauls or custom SGs are virtually guaranteed to sound better than cheap copies. The difference in sound, however, is often so minimal that a single pedal or effect can mask it. Of course, your tone isn’t everything. There’s still your setup, tuning, and electronics. These things, however, can be fixed for much less than you would have paid for an expensive guitar.

Are expensive instruments better? Yes. Are they thousands of dollars better? That depends on your opinion. Mine is no, they aren’t.

Specifications

According to Thomann music, the primary retailer for the Harley Benton DC, the specs are as follows:

As far as I can tell, all of the listed specs are true, especially the important ones like the selector switch tuners, and neck profile.

Thoughts

I bought the B-stock version of this guitar, meaning that someone else bought it and returned it previously. Once returned, the Thoman Music staff reduced the price to 180 and inspected it. Before buying, I wanted to make sure they did, in fact, check the intonation and performance of B-stock models, so I emailed them, and they sort of vaguely affirmed my question.

My Harley Benton came in 3 days. I’m not sure how this is even possible, as it was coming from Germany, but I’m not complaining. My first impressions were that it didn’t feel like a 180-dollar guitar — it felt much more expensive. I’ve spent plenty of time messing around in guitar stores, and nothing Epiphone offers for under 400 dollars can even begin to compare.

It’s honestly incredible how this thing feels, but that wouldn’t matter if it didn’t work or sounded like garbage. Fortunately, that isn’t the case. I knew from the moment I chose to buy a cheap instrument that I’d end up changing pickups. I was, however, pleasantly surprised at how not terrible they were. I’ll likely end up changing them, but I don’t have the sense of urgency about it that I might, had I purchased a noisy, microphonic Firefly instead.

The one thing I’ll caution about the pickups is that they can’t really do metal in standard or drop D tunings without a good treble boost. Dark pickups can sometimes work well for doom on low tunings, but I’m not sure that’s the case here. You can always take away high frequencies, but it’s harder to add them if they aren’t there in the first place. If you plan to use your guitar primarily for metal, plan on changing pickups.

Positives

The tuners and finish are probably the two most impressive things about this guitar. I have both a Bullet Strat and an Affinity Strat, and both go out of tune all the time. The Affinity is better, but it isn’t fantastic. My Epiphone is a bit better than either, but it still doesn’t compare to the Harley Benton’s Grover tuners. I used to have an Agile guitar that had Grovers, but I don’t remember them performing this well.

Finish and feel are almost as important as tuners, and both are both excellent on my Harley Benton. There are a couple of tooling marks on the neck, but they don’t affect playing whatsoever. No scratches, breaks, or signs of wear.

Overall:

Excellent tuners and nut (stays in tune)
Good finish
Decent setup
Looks cool
Coil splitting

Downsides

Besides the pickups, my main complaint is that the frets are uneven in a couple of places (and by paces I mean individual strings on certain frets). This isn’t a significant problem, as even a slight action adjustment can mostly fix the consequent fret buzzing, but it’s still something to point out. This isn’t the kind of issue you usually run into when paying for a new premium guitar, so it just goes to show that there’s no free lunch. Fortunately, frets are easily fixed.

Overall:

Mediocre pickups
Some uneven frets
Loose control knobs

Comparable Products

Epiphone SG
Agile SG style
Firefly FFLG

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Cheap Gear Review: Harley Benton Double Cut