Harley Benton MultiScale-7 TPB

Well, i admit that i was pretty conditioned by reviews and video before trying out this beautiful guitar. I'm very satisfied by the over-all feeling of the instrument and i came out with different opinions.

First of all, i must say that it has been probably treated bad during shipping and in the warehouse, since fretboard and neck were dry as Sahara and with some minor bumps on them (especially on the neck and top).
Speaking of construction quality i must say that i'm quite impressed by the veneer, which i find astonishingly beautiful and polished mirror-like good. The guitar looks really nice and aggressive, well shaped and solid.
Less impressed by the bridge and mechanics, which i find a bit clanky and bad polished. Lowest string's blocker doesn't screw enough to touch the gear, doesn't block at all indeed.
The hole for output jack seems to be carved with a knife, there were wood splinters everywhere and i can see the carved bare wood underneath the jack plate. A little more care like with the other carved holes would have been appreciated.
I must point that the strings have only half a round on the pegs and are cut with no-mm excess, so when i tuned them (standard tuning) the higher strings just slipped out of the holes and i had to refit them in a temporary solution to even play the guitar itself when unboxed...it would need a string change very soon.

Despite that the actual setting of the guitar, action, intonation, etc...well, was made by someone who really knows what he's doing. God-like. Hand's flowing on the fretboard without even noticing that is fanned, pinch harmonics squeal like hell. A wonderful job.

Speaking about the sound, i will say the opposite of the other reviewers. I like the pickups and how they're set. Yes, they are passive and low on output, but it clearly depends on the amplifier as well. I play the guitar with a Peavey Invective head, which is known to be capable of extra-tight high-gain sounds, and i find the output awesome. Compared to the EMG 81-85 i mount on my main Jackson RR i clearly hear the volume difference, but i didn't find that complete lack of clarity that the others complained. Provided that bridge and neck are used for totally different purposes: neck pickup is really pleasant for clean channel chords and arpeggios (combined with tone knob, which makes a wonderful job), while bridge is perfect for riffs, shredding, etc. Those ramp up pretty high interference and the guitar itself is pretty resonant, i highly recommend to try it with a fretwrap and gate control on the amp turns the whole story into something you could record with. I'm impressed, i started with the idea of changing the pickups but i think they will stay there for a long time!

I think that Harley Benton's 7-String Multiscale is a beautiful opportunity to enter a different world of playing guitar, and i'm glad i had it. This obviously comes with some flaws, some of them we can justify with price, some not.
I didn't expect incredible locking mechanics for this price, but mounting strings cut so short that they slip off with a standard tuning makes no sense.
Everything of this guitar is however a very solid and beautiful base for upgrades, wood's good and if well treated i think it will last for decades.
Thomann service is impeccable as always!! Thank you!

I am loving this guitar. The Harley Benton Multi-Scale-7 TPB. I've been playing guitar since the 1980's. Not professionally (that dream faded long ago). I just play for fun, and I have a lot of guitars, but I've never had a 7 string. I wanted one - and the Harley Benton pricing made this a no-brainer. I've never had a Harley Benton either, so I had watched a few reviews and it seems the concensus is "Harley Benton is sometimes great, but even when it's not - with a little bit of work you can make it great". That is the greatest compliment any guitar company can get. I've had $1500 guitars arrive that still need work out of the box. Dean, Jackson, B.C. Rich, you name them, simple fixes are expected. While I'm no luthier, I can do most everything, and simple modifications needed to fix things that might be off. --- But this guitar is perfect, it needed nothing. It arrived 3 days after shipping, so everything was still roughly the way the Thomann technician set it up. It's amazing. Right out of the box - everything is beyond my expectations. The single string bridge design is brilliant, whomever came up with that should get a Nobel Prize. Every string is completely independent from the others. Set the action, intonation, and tuning without it ever effecting the other strings. Brilliant!!! The guitar is stunningly beautiful, it looks like a million bucks, and plays like it too. Whoever did the set-up on this guitar, I thank you ... it was great. The action and intonation are spot on. All I had to do was tune it .. right out of the box, this thing is perfect. I did have a bit of trouble keeping 2 strings in tune .. but that was due to a couple of loose screws in the tuning heads. A screwdriver and 10 seconds later - this guitar is solid perfection. It stays in tune, plays great, sounds great. The neck is as smooth as any in my collection. The frets are as cool as Djent will allow, seriously though ... the frets are leved, rounded, and polished, as though they've been through a plek machine. A plek and tech set-up alone costs twice as much as this guitar ... and it already has all of that done. Really, I am in awe at the quality and set-up of this guitar. The pickups are the only week-link in this design. The covers make them look sweet, but they are not "hot" enough. But that's okay, simple adjustments in the effects processor make up for that. It just means I can't use my regular setups for this guitar. It gets its own seperate adjustments ... no worries. I really love this guitar, and I smile every time I play it.

I'll start off by saying I enjoy the feel and playabilty of this guitar but there are some issues.
The tuners are very jumpy, i could be turing it for neary halfway around before getting the pitch to change and when it downs it'll jump to being too sharp/flat. locking mechanisms aren't great.
Pickups are very muddy and alot weaker than i expected.
it's not bad but it could be better. There aren't many video reviews of this guitar but Andrew baena has a video on the 8 string model which has similar issues so you can equate the same to this.

The reason i kept it even with this issues is that they can be solved with after market parts anyways. which makes it a good mod platform. I really like the 5 piece neck and its been a great introduction into multiscale guitar

this is the first multiscale 7 string I ever bought and i'm relatively happy with it as an introduction to the multiscale world. with a bit of tinkering like replacing the strings with higher gauge ones, oiling up the fretboard and adjusting the truss rod it is a great 7 string for its price.

the things I had a bit of an issue with are that the frets are very sharp on the side and the pickups are a LITTLE bit on the spongey sounding side.

The tuners are also not very accurate. might be the nut, or both.

apart from the points above, I am very happy with the guitar.

recommended for if you don't want to break the bank for a 7 string multiscale.

The guitar looks and feels really good. The finishing was excellent. The fret work was much better than what I've seen from Ibanez at twice the price. The neck is about 2mm thicker than I am used to, but it's fine. Some people prefer it that way. The frett board was DRY but took oil well. For the money, this is a really nice guitar. The multiscale is only a difgerence of 1.5" from lo to high. There was no adjustment period. I just picked it up and played. The pickups are passable but not great. They have enough output for easy pick squeals. But they sounded soft a spongy to me. So I installed a 24v emg setup, and now she screams. EDIT: after a couple months of light play the machine heads unwind as I bend strings. The bridge saddles are of such poor quality that the height adjustment on half of them were stripped. Now I'm going to have to spend half the cost of the guitar to replace machine heads and bridge. This guitar has become an exceptionally bad deal.