Harley Benton HB-35Plus Metallic Blue

I bought this guitar as I always wanted a strat, a Les Paul and a 335 in my collection. Mostly to recreate the sounds of the music I like to play. My wife and I played as a two piece pop and classic rock. I got my strat 15 years ago and gigged with it extensively. Shortly after that I got my LP but it was too heavy to play for an entire gig. I got the Harley Benton recently and if It had been available to me 15 years ago I am sure it would have been my main gigging guitar. Some of my favourite guitarists are Johnny Marr, Billy Duffy, Scotty Moore and George Harrison .The HB35 gives me some great tones. It looks and sounds amazing. I have only ever had standard pick ups in my guitars but these Roswell’s are really impressive.
The guitar has a sweet musical jangle to it, which is what I expected from a hollow body.
I have only been playing it out of the box and the intonation is pretty good. The action is a little high but that’s an easy fix. The fretboard is unusual as it is that pao ferro. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just different from my rosewood fretboards. The coil tap is an interesting feature that actually does give a strat like tone, although I don’t know if I would use it that often. Overall even my wife and daughter could not believe what I paid for this guitar, my wife even said it looks great as decoration in the house. They also loved the sound of it through my little Fender practice amp.
I am so impressed with the build quality that I am going to indulge in Harley Benton’s paisley telecaster

This is my first HB guitar, and my first budget guitar, too. I've bought it to try a 335 shape out and see for myself what's the hype is about. I've been playing for more than ten years now (though I'm a bassist first and foremost), over the years I've had many expensive instruments - Gibsons, Fenders, what have you, so my expectations were set high. And so far, I'm very impressed with this axe, I like it a lot. There's some room for improvement, more on this below.

It's a very attractive, visually striking instrument. The contrast between the blue metallic top and the yellow of the back and sides looks wonderful. It looks much better in person, the photos don't really do it justice. Here also lies its most obvious flaw for me - the painted binding is made sloppily, with paint bleed and blemish here and there, and that's about the only disappointing factor about this guitar for me. Still, you can't see it at arms length, and the models with cream plastic binding should be better in this regard.

The guitar feels nice in my hands. The neck is comfortably thick yet not so thick as a vintage spec Les Paul, the fretwork is pretty impressive for the price - all the edges are leveled properly, and while the frets could use some polishing, it's nowhere as bad as the reviews led me to believe. Fixing that is a simple quick job with a dremel tool, masking tape and some polishing paste anyway. The nut is made of Nubone and made well. The volume knobs are fine, but a bit tricky to pull out. The tone knobs are very stiff, but workable. The pickup selector switch could be better, it's not a Switchcraft one I'm used to but come on, give it a break - for the price it's fine. There's no scratchiness or anything about it, it's just a bit too clunky for my taste. Changing it won't be too hard either.
It balances well both sitting and standing, and it's weighs 3,7 kg.
The unbranded 16:1 ratio tuners are pretty good, too - they're firm and tight, feel good and the guitar stays in tune well. The bridge has rolled off edges and doesn't hurt your hand, it's easy to adjust - I had to tweak the intonation a bit.

The sound is perfectly good. It's warm and round, with a lot of low end, and you can change it quite a lot with all the combinations of pickups and coil splits. My favourite is the middle position with split bridge pickup, it brings more top end to the sound. Add some dirt, and it still holds its own.

So, the pros:

- beautiful, vibrant looks
- nice sound with a lot of flexibility
- feels good overall
- quality hardware
- set up well out of the box

The cons:

- nitpicking about paint blemishes
- tone knobs are too stiff
- pickup switch is a bit clunky
- control cavity needs some tidying up
- frets could use some polishing

Overall, I'm impressed with Harley Benton. It's a damn good guitar for the price! I can hardly believe the bang for the buck ratio you can get these days, wish I've had something like that when I was a kid. Whether or not this guitar stays with me, I'm not sure yet, but so far it's been good.

I bought the HB 35+ metallic blue a few months ago. In my collection I have a Rickenbacker 360, a Gibson songwriter deluxe and an American Strat as well as a few miscellaneous great guitars . I have never been so impressed with a guitar that cost less than 10% of many in my collection. Which brings to mind the expression “the best guitar is the one you pick up and play” . Believe it or not this Harley Benton is my new go to guitar. It’s super comfortable to play came well set up right out of the box after a couple of minor adjustments is every bit as enjoyable as my much more expensive guitars.I have just ordered another HP and highly recommend them to all my musician friends. I think it’s true that the days of paying outrageous amounts of money for brand-name instrument are over and Harley Benton is leading the charge. Congratulations guys keep up the good work. A loyal customer in Canada

The guitar is visually stunning, the amount of features you get at this price point is incredible. Set in neck, push/pull coil splitting for both neck & bridge pickups, palermo fretboard & maple neck/body. My fretboard was a lot darker than the one pictured, but no matter!

It has a perfect jazz sound at a fraction of the cost of other hollow bodies, pickups are warm, mellow & full sounding. Like other HB's I own, it required a full set up on arrival, but that's also the case with far more expensive guitars I own.

The nut was perfectly cut, I've noticed a few dead spots on the tuners, but they hold tuning without issue. There's a tiny bit of fret buzz in the 13th fret of the B string, I suspect the fret is slightly lower than the rest, but it's hardly noticeable through the amp. They're the only flaws I had regarding playability, and honestly it's extremely minimal.

There's a few minor visual blemishes on the binding & fret ends where it looks like it was scuffed by a fretting tool, as well as a small mark on the fretboard. There's also some small blemishes on the paintwork & the gold plating has rubbed off on the tune-o-matic bridge where my hand is positioned while playing. Again, absolutely none of that effects playability & the overall look is stunning.

At this price I can absolutely forgive a couple of blemishes, because most importantly, it plays & sounds gorgeous!

Let's get the first thing out of the way: I purchased this guitar entirely because of the modern look and how the colours were used. It looked magnificent, and in person, I'd say more so. If you want something that stands out, this is it.

I own "a few" semi-hollow and hollow body guitars. I generally prefer the smaller "39" sized models in this shape, and the much larger acoustic style archtops. Right now, I have a single 35 type to compare to in terms of size and shape.

Shape, construction, colour and attention to detail is good to very good. Frets a much better then I expected, though will need minor touch up and polish. Fretboard colour is pleasing in this overall combination and post cleaning looks very good.

Room for improvement:
1) As shipped, the bridge is set higher then any semi-hollow I own. I will need to see if I can coax it lower. The neck's break angle is pretty large, reminding me of 175 hollowbody territory, so this might be necessary.
2) The tone pots are very heavy and hard to rotate
3) The tone/volume knobs are slick and offer little grip
4) The push-pull volume pots are smooth in rotation, but with the shape/grip of the knobs, it mean you require to "three finger claw" to pop them up
5) The pickup/control cables aren't tidy, would have been nice to have an anchor point in the cross beam between the upper volume and tone pots to drag it in

As for tone, I think this might be a place for your ears, needs and budget to decide. They'll do if this is meant to be a platform to mod with x35 wire kit and new pickups, but the jazzy folks might also be served as-is. I would have enjoyed a more Gretschy or Hot Rodded option personally, especially given the stand-out looks.

My sample size of one weighs : 3.45kg/7.60 lbs

I think this will remain in the collection, but I will likely replace the tuners (because 95% of the time I do) and replace the pickups. I like how the tone/volume knobs look (colour/shape), but I will need to replace them even before considering upgrading the pots, as they impede smooth control.

For home playing only, I’ve been using a Les Paul Classic, and a look-alike Telecaster, but I’ve always had a yearning for a semi acoustic. I saw this on u-tube and couldn’t find a negative review. Didn’t want to splash out on a “proper” Gibson or maybe Epiphone,
and this looked stunning in the various colours. Mine is the Metallic Blue - with gold fittings which looks sort of classic.

Thoroughly recommended
Great service from Thomann - it arrived 7 days after order (UK), even though Thomann showed it to be not in stock, well packed and in perfect condition.
It does indeed look great with hardly any negatives that I could find, and even the internal wiring was just about out of sight through the F holes. (Some online reviews had criticised this so I presume HB had fixed it). The volume and tone control knobs are a bit hard to read with this colour scheme - but I can live with that.
I was a bit wary of how it would play at this price point, and not being able to try it first, but it was almost perfect out of the box. Just a quick tune up and off we went. The action was OK - but I have dropped it down a tiny bit at the bridge and it’s just about how I like it now. I thought the frets felt a little bit scratchy so I treated them to a bit of a polish and also oiled the finger board, which looked a bit dry.
Tone wise it’s got a great range as I had hoped - so I’m very pleased. And I haven’t really explored the split pots yet.
All in all amazing value for money, I’m not clever enough to know how it would sit against the “real thing” but it holds it own against the Les Paul so it must be pretty good!

Interesting to see how the gold plate holds up over time

Well done HB

Overall I am very happy with this guitar. I looks, feels and sounds like the real deal.

I've not had chance to fully test the sound yet but first impressions are that it sounds great.

Is it perfect? No, but for the price is amazing. In regard to manufacturing quality, there are a few minor paint blemishes, the pickups will need some adjustment and there is some glue residue inside (seen through the upper F-hole) but I can easily remove that. It is advertised as having D'Addario string but I don't think they are (as they don't have the typical colour coding).