Harley Benton ST-62DLX OW Vintage Series

Tinha boas expectativas, mas conseguiu surpreender-me muito pela positiva.

Veio com um setup quase perfeito. Receava que a pestana viesse alta, mas não, veio com altura adequada. Receava trastes salientes, mas simplesmente perfeito. Repito: perfeito. E nenhum traste a criar notas mortas. Algum defeito? Apenas um: necessidade de serem polidos, mas o próprio uso da guitarra resolverá rapidamente. A acção das cordas veio um pouco alta para o meu gosto, mas adequado, não considero sequer que seja um ponto negativo. Os afinadores fazem bem o trabalho.

Sobre os pickups pouco poderei dizer, pois há muito que não toco com verdadeiros single coils. Fiquei agradado com o som deles.

Já disse que o braço é incrível? A qualidade do braço é o que destaco. Recomendo a guitarra. Vale muitíssimo mais do que o valor que a vendem.

Alguma coisa a mudar nela? Nem por isso, se for para transformar numa guitarra de topo, direi que lhe falta somente eletrónica de topo: potenciómetros, interruptores, e talvez os pickups. De resto é incrivelmente boa.

At this price point, the Harley Benton is incredibly competitive. The visual aesthetic is very cool (if gold is your thing), the feel is nice, frets are smooth, and there were no visual defects that I could see. It absolutely beats every Bullet Strat I've played, and those go for a similar price.

When played through high gain, there is a strange ringing sound that's almost like fret buzz. It's not though (setting the action ridiculously high and the buzzing still remained). I then thought it might have been the springs, but applying the foam mod to deaden the springs didn't help either. It's not a problem for recording, as I can slap on Soothe2 before the amp sim and cut down on most of the sound.

Using the tremolo bar will throw the guitar out of tune. No amount of string stretching or changing of string gauge helped this - not even throwing on a set of locking tuners (though this did make string changing more convenient, but then again, how often do I change strings?). I'd recommend modding the bridge to work as a hardtail.

The guitar needed a little intonation adjustment out of the box.

All that aside, the sound is good, the feel is great, and there is much less single coil hum compared to my Bullet Strat which makes it much more fun to play with high gain. For the price, this Harley Benton could be an excellent modding platform too.

Overall, for around £150, this Harley Benton Strat has been the perfect budget replacement for my Bullet Strat.

Neck on the "Deluxe" model had some nasty spikey fret ends on delivery. Some of the screw holes for attachment of the scratchplate (pickguard) have not been lined up perfectly thus there are screws which sit proud at untidy angles which looks to have been caused by being drilled before fitting the neck as the scratchplate is very tight to the neck pushing it out of alignment with the holes. The pickup selector would not select bridge pickup (either alone or with middle) until I fixed it (had this been tested it would have failed). Needed a significant setup including filing nut slots, neck shim and fret levelling.
Well that's the negative out of the way, now the positive. Following setup plays and feels good, tuners are good quality and hold tune, vibrato bridge is fine and works well. It sounds great, like a real ST which is certainly not a given even with more expensive ST types. Pickups are very good, no need to change (take note I changed the pickups on my other three Harley Benton electrics). Other than what I have already pointed out the finish is good, Olympic White being a slightly yellow white somewhere between White and Vintage White though all the gold plate and anodising may not be to everyone's taste; bear in mind the aluminium scratchplate provides decent hum shielding.
I've had the scratchplate off to inspect the electronics. Predicatably there is a PCB type selector rather than a blade type which is fine with me. Very pleasantly surprisingly, the pots are full size (!) and there are two (green) tone capacitors, one for each tone pot both unusual for budget guitars. Perhaps there is more than meets the eye to the "Deluxe" tag.
Summarising: as stated above, not quite all it should be out of the box but with a significant setup is now a jolly good instrument at a great price though less so if, unlike me, you need to pay for someone else to do the setup.