Harley Benton SC-1000 SBK Progressive Line

This is my first guitar with active pickups. I'm a huge Metallica fan, and love the sound that Hetfield gets from his guitars with active pickups. I ordered the L-1000VB fully understanding it wouldn't compare to a much more expensive Hetfield model ESP guitar. With that being said, I was blown away when the guitar arrived.

The finish is a cool looking matte black. The pickups are also black, which gives it a very cool look when paired with the gold hardware. The flag inlays also add to the look of the guitar. So aesthetically it looks awesome.

The tuners on this guitar are sort of loose and imprecise. I was surprised because the chrome hardware on my other Harley Bentons was quite good. The guitar came with D'Adario strings which was a nice plus. Most guitars these days seem to come with terrible strings that you have to replace right away. The D'Adario's are nice. The guitar also came with a 9V battery, which is nice. Would suck to get the guitar and not be able to play it because you didn't have a battery laying around. The guitar is silent until you put the battery in the compartment in the back of the guitar. Like I said, I've never had a guitar with active pickups, so I don't know if all of them behave that way.

The sound quality is very good. The pickups seem to be quite hot, which I was very happy about. Hammer ons, pull offs and tapping are all very easy to do. Also get some nice sounding pinch harmonics and a nice chug when I palm mute the E string. Sounds very dark and heavy when tuned down.

Now the bad part:
I ordered my L-1000VB along with a L-450Plus. Both guitars were shipped in separate cardboard boxes. Then each box is loaded inside of another outer cardboard box. The only sort of padding was a couple of air bladders that were wedged in. This prevents the guitars from shifting, but offer very little in the way of protecting the guitars. Both the L-1000VB and L-450Plus arrived damaged.

The L-450 had a broken 3 way switch, and the L-1000VB has a crack on the corner of the headstock. It looks like it was dropped. It cracked the clearcoat and the wood underneath is splintered. It's really a pity, because I love this guitar. Thomann really needs to figure out a better way to ship these guitars so they are better protected. I've ordered guitars from China that are packaged in styrofoam and they arrive in pristine condition. Cardboard boxes simple don't offer any sort of protection. I have to send photos of the damage to the guitars, and the boxes to Thomann so they can investigate. Hopefully I can get a pristine L-1000VB once they review my photos.

The guitar arrived quickly in the UK, was double boxed and unscathed from its journey. On opening the box I was pleased by the look and feel of the guitar.
Turned the guitar around and to my horror saw that the machine heads must have been installed by Stevie Wonder. Not one of the machine heads has been fixed to the headstock correctly - some are more crooked than others.
To put this right I would need to drill new fixing holes and rotate the machine heads leaving the current screw holes exposed.

I'm really not sure how Thomann can put a quality control check tag on the guitar like this.

Even at this price point I think this is unacceptable and something that should be easily rectified at the factory in China.

Will I keep the guitar ?
Probably - as I may follow others example and replace the machine heads with better quality ones anyway.
The rest of the guitar is fine - out of the box it plays quite well although frets are a little rough and need a good polish.
The neck is nice with no nasty jagged fret ends or dodgy binding to speak of. Intonation was pretty much spot on out of the box as was string height (for me).

Bought this with a Blackstar HT Metal head for a project that needed authentic metal sounds. Didn't need to be excellent, just good enough.
Good news: guitar looks and sounds the business.
Bad news: intonation, string height, and tuning pegs all awful. Intonation is out by a quarter tone across the neck, string height is such that you damp open strings in some chords because your fingers are sat between the strings instead of over them, and the tuning pegs are pitiful. I have a Harley Benton Custom Line ResoKing which is a favourite guitar for slide, so they do know how to do this stuff - although the pegs are poor on that as well.
If you know how to fix this stuff and have time, this guitar is a bargain. If you don't then budget £50-70 for a guitar tech to do it. Still a bargain, I think, but this might appeal to young metal players without the extra cash, so you need to know this in advance. You won't be doing any shredding otherwise!