Harley Benton TE-20 SB Standard Series

Wow! We arrived in France for a couple of days so brought no instruments with us. Things changed rapidly and we realised we were going to be there for longer than we expected. No guitars so we went to the Thomann web site and bought a couple of these, one left handed for me and one right handed for the wife. This is about the RH one. Obviously for something that might end up being used a little I went for the low cost option. Bouyed up by the positive reviews which I took with a pinch of salt, but knowing from experience about Thomann's good customer service I ordered with confidence. The guitars arrived in four working days and we eagerly opened the box. What a surprise was in store for us. First impression, great finish. Closer inspection I could find no faults. Really close inspection and I was questioning Thoman's pricing policy. Under 100Euroes for a great guitar. SO for instance out of the box no issues with the set up. No issues? Yes. Would I adjust it? (I'm apparently the goto guy for my mates). No way! Barre chords? No problem all the way. Intonation. Measured up just fine, on a Tele for heavens sake. So what about the cutaway?
Fender could do with some lessons here. It'seasily reach all the frets. I have seen worse on really expensive kit. The join between the body and the neck was all but indetectable. The gap between the scratch plate and the switch plate was non existant. Fret ends? Here is the one reason for only four stars. The frets themselves, all well polished. No marks on the well finished hardware. Tuners were ok, and it holds it's tune. At this point in the review you might be forgiven for thinking we are enthusiastic! So what about the sound. Obviously whoever makes the pickups has seriously upped their game, or HB have found a better supplier.. Lots of punch, and great tones. Everything you want from a Tele. All the “twang” all the drive, but more. Some mates arrived and we played for a few hours. (Well until after midnight) Everybody tried one of our new guitars, and to a person they were impressed. A lot. We had it plugged into a little VOX 5W amp, with the other four players ere all using amps a lot bigger. Still no problem hearing what we were playing. So the pickups have lots of depth and drive. If we lost them would we buy another? Yes in a heartbeat. In fact we are going to leave these in France and order more when we return to the UK to avoid Carnets. Would we gig with them? Yes definitely! If money were no object would we buy a different Tele? No. Could we afford more expensive gear? Oh yes, but why would we? Would this be suitable for a beginner? We always tell our pupils buy the best you can afford, “beginner” instruments are normally a waste of money because the pupil fights the instrument, thinks they can't learn when in fact a lot of the limitations is caused by the inadequacies of the instrument. So these low cost guitars change the game plan because they are the best you can afford. Buy them once and play them till they are worn out. Are we looking for more pupils? No definitely not. Before you ask we don't teach the RSM curriculum, it's about playing not making money for the RSM. Winge over.

This is a cheap guitar at €69:00 BUT in fairness " you get what you pay for !!

Its never going to be a Fender , But for €69 its a cracking little guitar ! ..

I would go as far as to say this is a better guitar than the Squier Bellet Telecaster or the Squier Affinity Telecaster .

Fit and Finish ...

looks amazing for a €69 guitar :-0 ! Honestly . I was stunned when I took it out of the box !! Ive paid 1000s for guitars and the finish to the body wasent as good as this guitar :-)

The set up was 80% " Over all ok " Just had to do a little tweeking and in no time it was all good.

The Good ... Everything ... remember this is a €69 telecaster !!!!! How could you complain about anything on a €69 guitar :-) .

The Guitar does have its flaws .

I changed the machine heads/Tuners for a 18/1 ratio to get more stable tuning " at a cost of around €40 , so total it cost €104 for a cracking little guitar !

I used the guitar for some home recording and it done the job very very well ,

The above guitar would suit any one and even if its a gift and the person never picks the guitar up " Its no the end of the world as it only cost €69 :-) , the guitar would just look great sitting in the corner of the room :-) .

As always I would recommend a very cheap mod to everyone buying a guitar , " Get a set of strap locks . this will extend the life of your guitar .

to finish ,,

The above guitar is not a Fender and can not be compared with a €1200 Fender telecaster USA ... BUT for €69 you really can not go wrong .

A friend of mine bought the same guitar after seeing my Harley Benton Tele , he changer out the machine heads/Tuners and put a set of good pickups in the guitar and uses it to gig with and the guitar NEVER gave him one moments trouble !!

I honestly think that most people buying guitars get caught up in the name /brand of a guitar , You could buy the above guitar and hate it or you could love it . Its NOT about the name/brand or where it was made , Its how happy the guitar makes you when you play it ..

Hope the above is of some help .

The Harley Benton TE-20 being priced even cheaper than the Squier Bullet range, I expected the same quality issues: many crooked pickguard screws, off-center bridge, “fret sprout” (i.e. protruding sharp fret edges), loose neck pocket, etc.

I felt absolutely certain that it was going to have some issues, so, to avoid having to return the faulty TE-20 and wait for a replacement, I ordered two of them! My plan was to choose the least bad one and return the other. But I was in for a sweet surprise... I opened the first box, inspected the guitar, and was shocked to be unable to find any significant issues. But I thought that I had gotten lucky. Then, I opened the second box and inspected the second guitar with an even more critical eye. To my astonishment, the second one was as well made as the first. Honestly, they were both so good, I had no idea whatsoever which one to keep, so I picked the one that had the nicest wood grain. Sure, I could have gotten extraordinarily lucky and received two exceptions, but if two guitars in a row are this good, Harley Benton must be doing something right.

And I am saying this as a perfectionist who is always highly critical of every minute detail, which the vast majority of people do not even notice: all six tuning machines are in a pretty much perfectly straight row, the nut is well cut, there are no sharp fret ends, no obvious blemishes in the chrome plating, the neck plate is parallel to the neck, the bridge is perfectly centered and parallel to the edge of the pickguard, all the dot fingerboard markers are satisfactorily well centered between the frets, and so on. If I had to nit-pick, I would say that the tuning machine gear ratio is pretty low, so it is easy to overshoot when tuning. But it simply requires a bit more concentration.

Other than that, both guitars were pretty much perfect! In terms of tone, the pickups sound like a generic Telecaster, so, if you are looking for that tone, you can get it on the TE-20. This is an excellent choice for a beginner or someone looking for a cheap beater guitar. I imagine, it should be a great modding platform, but first make sure that the Fender parts are compatible with these Harley Bentons. These are really incredible! My four times more expensive Squier had a lot more quality issues than the two TE-20 I received! I am sure that my next beater guitar is going to be some kind of a Harley Benton. There is simply no need to look any further.

UPDATE: After owning my TE-20 for a few months, I decided it was time to do what I always do with all of my guitars: completely disassemble it, fix all of the cosmetic and functional flaws, then put it back together again, and set it up to my liking. As I was doing so, I made a few observations that some potential buyers might find interesting. They are as follows:

1) There were around half a dozen screws in total that turned worryingly easily, and one of the strap pins was completely loose. I fixed all of those issues by reducing the sizes of the problematic holes using splinters of a toothpick dabbed in wood glue.
2) The pickup and control cavities are not shielded (no foil, no conductive paint — nothing), which is perfectly fine for such a mindbogglingly cheap instrument.
3) The routing, except for a couple of small tear-outs, is pretty tidy. Tidier than on my Affinity Telecaster, which cost nearly three times as much!
4) The neck pickup cavity is a lot larger than necessitated by a single coil. It should fit a humbucker and, perhaps, even a P90. Unfortunately, I did not have any pickups at hand to test the fit. But it seems rather deep, so there should not be any issues.
5) Each pickup has a bar magnet attached to the underside of it. Also, since there was some waxy residue on both pickups, I assume, they are potted. I was surprised to see that the bridge pickup had a brass bottom plate, as is usual on vintage Telecasters.
6) The potentiometers are of the mini-size variety. The knobs are metal on the outside but have plastic inserts that fit on the split-shaft posts, just like on my Squier.
7) The soldering is surprisingly good for such an inexpensive instrument — on par with more expensive Squiers!
8) The neck pocket is cut so well that the neck pretty much stayed in place with all four screws removed! I had to carefully wiggle it out of it.

Summing up, this is a truly excellent guitar that is more than good enough to inspire a young budding musician to keep practicing. If it had me, a man in his thirties, smiling from ear to ear, a young child who has never played anything better should be over the Moon. Compared to what I started on back in the day, this is amazing!

I bought this guitar for one of my students (according to his budget). I was expecting really a lot of work with setting up/cleaning and fixing factory faults.

To my surprise it came with nicely polished and crowned frets (this is something you really do not expect if the guitar is less than 400 Euro). I was able to lower the string action like on good Gibson. The finishing job is also very nicely done.

Now - keep in mind I am rating this guitar according to other guitars in a price range around 100 Euro.

THE GOODS
- Unbeatable price!
- Really good fret works. Frets are even, crowned and polished (pity I cannot attach pictures here).
- It is in tune (no saddles adjustment were needed).
- Very nice (visually) paint finish.
- Very nice (visually) fretboard finish.
- Thicker, but very comfortable neck with mat finish.
- Working electronics (I really mean it, proper, correct electronics for installed pickups).

THE BADS
- Pickups are not of good quality, I replaced them with set of Chinese pups bought on Amazon (Thomann shall start selling cheap - affordable pickups)
- Tuners - I replaced them with locking tuners from Harley Benton (Thomann brand) - with better ratio 18:1 I believe
- Top and bottom of body is laminated with something that looks like photo-wallpaper (still, guitar looks very good)
- Fretboard (Amaranth ) is dyed with something, I had my fingers black after 20 minutes of playing. So - before you restring this guitar - take some time and clean the fretboard :-)

SUMMARIZING
Exceptionally affordable and well build guitar. Either for beginners, or for some "going on war" situations. Easily (tuners and pickups replacement) customisable to be very playable guitar. And again - do not compare it to guitars or instruments 4-5 or 10 times more expensive. In this price range it is probably unbeatable.

i really don't know how thomann do this for the money. really.
wanted something that i could do a bit of modding with...something i wouldn't regret making a bit of a mess with. at this price i didn't have to think twice.
body? my example has a 5-piece body and rather nice grain. the sunburst is done well as is the finish. the finish is quite thick...won't be easy to remove if you wanted to. that's not a criticism though as it will protect the wood from knocks and bumps.
simple bridge which provides good intonation and was already set so the strings were at a decent height. no need for adjustment there.
pickups? suitably jangly as you would expect from a tele style guitar. they do pack a punch though and i'm keeping them for the moment. they do produce a lot of hum when i'm using high gain but the vast majority of single coil pickups will do that no matter what the price.
neck? i was ready to attack the back of the neck with wire wool to obtain a nice, satin, finish. i didn't have to. out of the box it has a lovely sheen which enables your hand to slide easily up and down the neck. the neck is maybe the thing that surprised me most about this guitar. the finish is great all over and extends all the way up to the well shaped headstock.
fingerboard? one of my main criticisms with the last harley benton i purchased was the fingerboard. it wasn't well finished and could have been much improved. with this tele things are a lot more pleasant. nice close grain and very smooth. i did give it few drinks of lemon oil when i changed the strings though.
frets? they're well dressed all the way up to the top (or down to the bottom...whatever way you're looking at it). i was getting some buzz when fretting at the 1st but a slight loosening of the truss rod sorted that quickly.
tuners? not bad. not great either. sure you could get away with using them but i fitted some wilkinsons for extra stability (it's a £48 guitar remember...you can't expect grovers on there).
to sum up. am i happy with my purchase? very happy. so happy in fact that i think i'll buy another one for my brother.
service from thomann was excellent as always. i'll be back many more times.

Just received this guitar in the mail. Unboxed, in perfect condition, almost in tune even!
I will preface this review with my over 20 years of guitar playing and having previously owned a Fender American Telecaster. Given the price on these guitars I picked up a couple out of sheer curiosity after hearing good things. So. Plugged in, tuned up and played for about 20 minutes. Setup out of the box is pretty good! I?ll let it settle in a bit before I decide to make any adjustments.

So first, the bad: the frets are incredibly scratchy. Bending is like dragging the string across sandpaper. Fortunately I?m capable and ready to give this a fret polish in the near future. The pickups are also pretty weak. Lifeless and shockingly dark for a tele. I think I?ve decided to make this a project guitar. New pickups are a must.

Onto the good. This guitar is extremely cheap and you get a hell of a lot of guitar for what you pay. It works. It makes sounds. You can fret the strings with ease. This would be an excellent guitar for a beginner. I can?t think of a better value. You can?t pick up a beat up Squier for cheaper than this! The tuners are ok. It seems to stay in tune. Pots and switch work fine.

Obviously this isn?t as nice as a real Fender Telecaster, but for its price you can buy what, seven of these Harley Bentons for the price of even a Mexican made! Truly I must commend Thomann. They?ve done really well with these budget starter guitars,
Actually providing a product that someone new at guitar can feel good about. Or even a fun little project for a seasoned tinkerer like me.

About a month and a half ago I bought this instrument, and I love it to bits. It sounds terrific, plays like butter (although it did require a thorough setup) and looks stunning. There is however one issue in particular that sticks out like a sore thumb to me and is the only reason it loses not one, but two stars, and that is the tuners. I passionately dislike them. They manage to feel sticky and too loose at the same time, and cost me way longer than reasonable to get my guitar in tune, by giving a lot of gnarly resistance and being too loose a fit between cogs at the same time. I plan to upgrade to better tuners ASAP myself.
Other than this issue, it is an absolute dream for the price. Everything just works, I have a real hard time telling it apart (soundwise) from more expensive Teles (a good thing) and I hope it will stay this way for many more months or even years to come.
TLDR: For the price, I doubt there is anything better you can get. I cannot recommend it more, but you will have to deal with annoying tuners.

So now that I have upgraded to better tuners and played it for a couple months more, I can say that this review still stands. I've even done some work under the pickup cover and to the frets and found a pleasant surprise: The neck pickup cavity is routed to fit a humbucker, if that's something you're into. The bridge cavity, however, is not. Also I've found that there isn't a whole lot of room underneath the potentiometers in case you would like to add push/pull functionality, the parts I installed just barely fit. Really that's all, it still is a good budget instrument, though quite heavy, and I don't regret buying it.