Harley Benton TE-30 BE Standard Series

I've been a Les Paul user for years and recently wanted to diverge into the world of telecasters. They're known to be versatile guitars so why not give them a try. I didn't fancy splashing out big money in case I didn't like it so based on the reviews the TE-30 seemed like it would be worth a shot seeing as it costs less than ¤90! Here are my thoughts:

Service from Thomann:
The guitar was dispatched the next day after my order was placed. The delivery was took 2 weeks which is longer than I have experienced before, the package seemed to be stuck in the export centre for a few days but obviously Thomann isn't at fault for this. The guitar arrived very well packaged and protected.

Finish:
The first thing I noticed was the weight of the guitar. It's very heavy compared to other teles I've held. This isn't a problem though as I'm used to the weight of Les Pauls and it makes the TE-30 feels very solid and sturdy. The paint job is very decent quality. The colour is more creamy than the pictures depict with a nice, even coating of high gloss lacquer. The grain of the ash is visible through the finish which looks very well. The only issue is there seems to be a small pen/pencil mark on the wood that is slightly visible through the finish, but it's not in a noticeable area so it doesn't bother me. The pickguard is well made, fits perfect and not cheap looking at all. However it is not quite to my taste so I replaced it with a black one. Just to note aftermarket pickguards aren't a direct fit so a little trimming and re-drilling is needed. The neck and headstock are finished in a light coat of lacquer, this keeps the original colour of the raw maple and doesn't have a shiny tacky finish which I really like.

Hardware:
Firstly the pickups, they are a lot better than I expected and sound as a Telecaster should. The neck sounds fantastic both clean and distorted. The bridge is good too and works well with the neck pup in the middle position, but it's missing some clarity and definition, it's usable but I replaced it anyway. The bridge causes no issues and is totally usable but for accurate intonation adjustments it might be worthwhile to swap the saddles out which I plan to do eventually. The tuners are one area where cost-cutting is evident. These should be the first thing to change, I had to tune the guitar every time I picked it up, and they didn't turn particularly well either. Some of the screws on both the tuners and string trees were only screwed in half way which led to a lot of rattle, I tried to screw them in the rest of the way but they wouldn't turn and eventually the top of one rounded off.

Playability:
First off the frets were not good, at all. The strings grated off them when performing bends. A fret level and re-crown sorted this and it now plays very well. The neck is very comfortable to play and the guitar is well balanced both on a strap and sitting down.

Overall this guitar is fantastic value for money. The body and neck are excellent quality so it makes it an ideal base for building a superb instrument on. Obviously at ¤89 there have been some corners cut with the hardware but after upgrading the tuners, strings, bridge pickup, a set up and some other mods of my own preference I now have a guitar that plays as well as one 10 times more expensive! I highly recommend the TE-30 if you are willing to put a small bit of more work into it to unleash it's full potential.

Okay, now I bought this product to fill both curiosity and a tonal gap in my guitar arsenal.

The following comments, I believe, are an honest appraisal from an experience guitarist.

I have another HB guitar, the semi hollow CST-24HB. The quality of that guitar was good, in fact very good for the price point. Hence, I thought I'd try a really budget HB guitar!

With guitars at this price you have to be realistic and understand where corners are cut. Namely tuners, the nut, electrics, setup and to a certain degree pickups. The HB-CST-24 was twice the cost of this "Tele"

The quality of the body and neck , including fretwork in both guitars is astounding, for the price.

I changed p/u's on the CST-24, tuners as well and cut a graphite nut (the stock one was way to high. This transformed an already pretty good £172 guitar to a very good one with an extra £75 spend.

Ok, back to the "Tele" £88 , "CHEAP"! yes, poor electrics yes, dull p/u's - to a certain degree (simple, cheap "Tele mods" cured that).

New nut required to replace plastic thing.

Changed saddles to compensated brass ones.

Will change neck p/u for either P90 or Humbucker(NEVER liked tele neck p/u's even on a real Tele. Possibly change the bridge p/u at some point.

Tuners are awful, changing those to locking ones asap.

Now, BOTH guitars setup easily to a LOW action, lower than I usually want, intonation improved immensely with compensated saddles on the "Tele"

To summarize:

Pros:
*Emminently upgradeable to achieve a good guitar for another £60 (better than a certain well known makes budget series)

* Setup well, very well in fact.

* Body one piece solid ash!

* Neck, one piece maple.

* Looks great.

* Stock, for a beginner with someone to set it up, with no upgrades, is an absolute bargain.

* My upgraded one will be great!

Cons:

* Experienced players will need to spend a little to bring up to their standards.

* Poor electrics, neck p/u, nut and tuners.

* Needs a setup.(action, intonation,nut)

* Body is heavy

In summary, I am happy with this guitar. I knew it would need work and a little spent on it to achieve what I regard as a good guitar. For a beginner it's a steal (after a setup)

To get right down to it:

GOOD:
-Frets were clean and well done. No sprout.
-Neck is excellent. A tiny bit bigger than the standard tele neck, but very playable and it looks great.
-Sounds like a telecaster. I was planning to swap the electronics, but this thing sounds so good on its own I've decided to leave them as-is.
-Looks awesome.

BAD:
-The only serious drawback is that this guitar weighs over nine pounds! That's a pound more than my Fender P-Bass. This is entirely due to the ash body.... changing the metal parts will have no impact. Very very heavy - be warned.
-The nut is plastic and was cut poorly. This should be the first thing you replace anyway.
-The pick guard cannot be replaced with anything that's on the market. The Harley Benton Tele pickguards sold by Thomann and elsewhere fit other tele models, but don't fit the TE-30. Fender/Squire pickguards and copies of the don't either - they're all far too short. So if you don't like the pick guard it comes with, you'll have to pay for something custom.

It's a great value guitar if you keep in mind how much you paid for it and are willing to put in some work to bring it up to scratch or have low standards in general.

I originally purchased it as a cheap guinea pig for practicing 'relic' work. It turned out to be worth keeping with a few changes and while it doesn't compare to a real Fender it's still fun to have around.

PROS
+ decent finish
+ nice chunky neck and body with good tone and sustain
+ plays decent
+ straight neck, surprisingly decent fret work
+ reasonable platform for basic modification

CONS
+ near useless tuners
+ non-standard design despite the 'Telecaster' look. For example if you wanted to swap out the neck, the routing is not compatible with a proper Fender neck. Fair enough, but then it's also not even compatible with other Harley Benton necks, having tried with both a TE-70 (fits with some effort but would need holes redrilled) and a Fusion-T neck (just forget about it).

MIXED
+ electronics are cheap but serviceable. Pots, pickup switch etc are not exactly the smoothest but at least don't sound crackly.
+ pickups are heavily microphonic. This is generally considered undesirable but I think can actually be a nice thing as long as you're not playing with heavy distortion to get some more natural playing sound. They do a decent enough job at imitating the Telecaster tone as long as you're going through a decent amp. If you're just playing at home or jamming out some blues in your garage, these do the job. If you're ever going to play live or record anything, or like to throw in anything more than a very mild overdrive, they need to be replaced.
+ tuners are junk as expected As long as you're not doing any string bending they're OK for the price though.

WHAT WOULD I CHANGE?
If you consider this as a cheap basis for modifying into a better insrument:

* better pickups (Fender Tex Mex are a great budget option here, I ended up with some Fralins when I decided I'd actually keep the guitar)
* replace the tuners with locking tuners (you may need to widen the tuner holes depending on which ones you buy)
* replace the nut with a Graph Tech nut
* copper tape shielding around the pickup cavities and under pickguard
* add string trees (genuine Fender roller trees are really cheap so don't skimp)

The price of the guitar just doubled but these are all pretty easy changes and you're left with a gig-worthy instrument instead of a collection of compromises.

The body was made of three well matched pieces. he finish was quite good except for a small blob of solid white paint beneath the clear coat. I bought the guitar to strip and stain, so it did not bother me. The body by itself weighs about 3 kg. The neck pocket fit was quite good. The pickguard is nice.

The hardware is extremely basic, as is to be expected for the price, but everything works as it should. It has a box type switch and 250 k mini pots, CTS pots wont fit unless the holes in the control plate are widened.

The intonation was spot on but the neck had a couple of high frets and the action at the nut was too high. I was planning on dressing the frets and replacing the nut with a bone nut from the beginning, so again, it did not bother me much.

The guitar is quite loud unplugged and sustains well, which is a good sign. The pickups do their job. ,There is no buzz even though the guitar is not shielded.

So, what is the verdict? Judging by other comments these guitars seems to be a bit hit and miss in regards to fit and finish from the box, but as a modding project, it is probably hard to beat. I would probably go for the more expensive HB models if my intention was not to mod it.

First one arrived damaged in transit, Thomann very quickly dealt with the problem and sent out a new one.

For the body my guitar is a genuine 1 piece slab of Ash and it's heavy, some might not like it but I love it. The finish is a bit......speckly but vey glossy.

The neck is like a baseball bat cut in half lengthways, I love the chunky neck. The frets are small and not very well finished at all.
The neck does have a very thin coat of lacquer despite what previous reviewers have claimed, whether or not they used to be like that I can't say but I bought mine in Nov 18. The tuners are junk, proper rubbish as expected at this price point.

The pickups are..... ok, they give a rough approximation of the Tele sound. The switch is clunky and pots slightly noisy but again you can't expect Switchcraft at this price point. The saddles are ok but as usual with barrel saddles intonation can be an issue.

I bought this guitar with the intention of using it as a project guitar, so what have I done ?

I have changed the saddles to Wilkinson compensated saddles, a quick fret job.. removed high spots, recrowned and polished. I also changed the tuners to decent quality locking tuners.
My only other job is reverse the control panel so the pickup selector is where the tone pot is but that is pure my preference.

It might sound like I've been ragging on this guitar but the truth is it's really not that bad for the price Thomann are selling it. You could get one and not change a thing on it...... well maybe the tuners and it would be a good player, I've just made mine better than stock.

With feets on the coffetable i scroll through dozens of youtube vids to find a new tele model for my self.
I listen to the sound basically. When I hear it, it takes me 10 sek. to decide if I like it or not. From before I have a Fender strat 1979 and a US tele from 84. The strat must have thousands of playingours on it because I did play for a living late 80es. The tele was partly a gift from my dad so I am a bit scared to drag it around gigging everywhere. Emotional you know.
I found the Harley Benton 30 where a guy played it. I liked the sound immediately.
Now I used it for a while. I even record a little with it. The sound is just as good as my US tele. A touch sweeter in a way, a bit quackyer maybe, and I love that. The US tele i have are bigger in the high frequencies maybe but that is not necessary a plus. Depends on what you want.
I believed I would change something after a while but I will not. I keep the pickups, I like the way the guitar sounds.
But I have to dig up something that is not all good right ? To stay trustworthy in a way ? Well, the frets had a somewhat jagged surface. Like small cuts at the surface or something. Maybe they transport wire for them at donkeyback or something ,I dont know but they should be careful with the materials. So what do I do about that ? Nothing, but playing the living daylight out of this thing, and now the use have polish that away.
Next on the block is the tuners. I am used to Fender tuners and at least one of the like dropped a little when start tuning. Just a little. Now when I am used to them i manage to use them and it is all good.
This poor thing will be put to mercyless work. That is how I express love.

Seen many good reviews of Hartley Benton guitars decided to purchase the TE-30, also having previously purchased a Hartley Benton acoustic.

Pros:
Excellent construction and finish

Neck is satin finish/Natural and wider in comparison to my Fender strat. Assuming this is typical for a Telecaster design style for Country/Blues/Rock, and slightly higher string setup, perhaps for playing slide.

Electronics; Both Tone/Volume knobs work well - tone and volume change is clearly notably, Switch works well, Pick-ups; Sound very good, give typical telecaster country plucking sound/ Bluesy Led Zepp. Perhaps a more experienced telecaster player may prefer to change pickups

Play ability; Yes, the strings seems to be little higher. However no problem playing notes right up to the 22 fret, no buzzing when bending or plucking. Comparing to America Fender stratocaster.

Cons:
Advised to replace stock strings

Machine heads are ok, top E is a little lose not the best.

Tone/Volume knob do not turn level, when looking from side. This does not effect their function.

Heavy guitar with quality Ash body - this may effect some people - using a hardwood body comes with the advantage of chip resistant in comparison to Bass wood, Popular or Lime wood which is much softer

Conclusion:
Advise machine head upgrade, otherwise very good quality guitar.
If you are picky the pickup can be upgraded. Feel that the sound quality should be judged for it own and not how much it sounds similar to the original. Every guitar has its own individual sound.

Thumbs up.

You can't even buy an unfinished ash Tele body for $92, so obviously this thing is a great deal right out of the gate. Mine is no exception. Mostly flawless finish, no sharp frets, etc. Tuners are a little weak, as are the pickups, but I didn't buy it for the hardware.

However...mine shipped with a different bridge than what is pictured. The pictures show the shorter, traditional size bridge. The one that shipped with mine is basically a basically a Squier Affinity bridge. This is important for a top loading bridge, as now I can't just drop in a Wilkinson style bridge without leaving 3 ugly screw holes visible on the back end of the bridge. Not cool. Again, not a quality or features issue, it's just not what I ordered.

This is a real bummer, as the stock bridge is not good, and I was going to replace it.