Harley Benton MultiScale-8 QBB

I was looking for a fanned fret to add to the collection since I've already got a Schecter Omen 8.

PROS:
Not a bad guitar for the money, there weren't many gaps or machine marks, finish was nice. It was absolutely NOT set up, so I had to pay my local luthier almost another $100 for a complete set-up. Once it was properly set up, it plays like an absolute DREAM. I LOVE THE NECK! Holy crap the neck is SMOOTH for such a low priced guitar!

CONS:
I had one huge issue, would have given the "qualilty" rating a 5 stars instead of just a 3 star rating but the fretboard had a splintered part in it that I didn't feel or see until it caught my ring, not a hard repair to do yourself but it shouldn't have happened. Assuming this is just an isolated incident, so no real hard feelings towards Thomann. Again, this is the only con I could come up with and being such a simple fix, I'm not worried too much about it. I still love this guitar.

YES, I'd definitely order from these guys again! I'm very impressed with Thomann and the product they can offer at such low prices. I'm hoping they venture into the 9 string market soon! I'd definitely order a 9 string from these guys.

First of all, a great guitar with an excellent setup right out of the box, just fine tuned it to my personal taste. Good fretwork with no rough edges, frets a bit rough, you could wait for them to wear off or just polish them.

Finish near perfect, just 2 spots on the neck joint. The satin finish, especially on the neck, is great and very comfortable to play. Btw what a beautiful neck! The amaranth fretboard is rather greyish, looks and feels good.

The locking tuners could be one of the parts to be upgraded, they do their job, the guitar is very stable, but they are not really smooth. Not a big complaint though.

The pickups are the only real issue I have with the guitar. They sound muddy and noisy, an awful combination for an 8 string. The next issue, try to find a replacement (in the case of this guitar, you need the 9-string variant, or you'll need to do some wood work), EMG 909, Fishman Fluence 9, Lundgreen 9 are some of the options, but none of those are available in Europe, here a great thank you to the Thomann guitar department, a custom order, some great advice and I got the EMG 909x PU’s with a very competitive price and only after 2 months instead of the 6 months expected when ordered.

Highlights: That neck is just fantastic, great QC for the price
Lowlights: The pickups

Vamos por puntos:
Los afinadores de locking y el "Nut" de buena calidad. No hay problema con la afinacion en lo absoluto.
El cuello, obviamente es ancho, pero no muy profundo, bastante comodo en la palma de la mano y totalmente aceptable para tocar rapido.

Los trastes no tienen muescas, asi que no hay inconmodidad al tocar.

La guitarra tiene 2 trussroads como algunos bajos.

El puente que esta compuestos por estos sillines individuales es aceptable. No he tenido con ningun inconveniente con ellos. Reacccionan bien a los ajustes de altura de las cuerdas y la entonacion.
La guitarrra llego bien entonada y con buena accion. Yo le he instalado cuerdas mas gruesas en la octava (0,90) y he tenido que obviamente ajustar la entonacion del sillin del puente.

La guitarra es SUPER comoda de tocar.

Mi unico punto medio/negativo, no tan negativo son las pastillas, pero por este precio son totalmente usables.
A diferencia de las otras 8 cuerdas de Harley Benton, estas no suenan con mucho bajo. Mas bien diria que les falta un poco de claridad en el rango de los bajos. Por supuesto, esto se puede deber a las medidas de las cuerdas que ya estan casi en el rango de cuerdas de bajo, pero el sonido es decentemente definido.

Quiero mencionar algo importante y es el color. Yo esperaba recibir una como la de la imagen, pero he recibido una un poco mas clara. Aun es muy bella y me recuerda a un tiburon tigre haha.

En resumen: Una guitarra brutal en construccion y comoda. Los pickups podrian ser mejores, pero si es verdad que los estoy comparando con mis otros lundgren que cuestan un poco mas que esta guitarra y si hay una obvia diferencia.
Aun asi, la guitarra excede mis expectativas iniciales y la recomiendo para varios generos.



Thall

I received this guitar at the beginning of the week, delivered perfectly by UPS, perfectly packaged by Thomann (Harley Benton box in Thomann box).

The first thing that caught my eye was the color of the guitar, a black stain that appears more brown than black in the photo online.
Everything else was 100% the same as in the pictures. The finish is perfect except for a small black spot on the side of the neck, against the fretboard.
That is a pity, but not reason enough to return this guitar.

This guitar plays perfectly right out of the box! Perfectly setup! OMG ! Plays fantastic, I have the greatest difficulty not to pick up the guitar and play!
I only had to adjust the intonation a bit, but everything else was tiptop! (I tuned the guitar in F)

The tuning pegs are not perfect but quite good, I've had much worse, so that's not too bad.
The pickups are indeed a bit muddy in sound, but they are certainly usable if you want to play some doom, if you really want to djent it is recommended
to look for other pickups (active for more definition and clarity)

The only thing that I really regret is the wood used for the body, basswood, which is very easy to work with because it is a soft wood and therefore extra sensitive
for dents and damage! (Thomann: ash wood is not that expensive!)

I'm not sure because I can't read it anywhere, but it would be an extra shame if the frets weren't steel, precisely because the guitar plays so nicely that you play it a lot
and therefore wear out the frets faster.

In short:

1) it's a rock solid guitar that is perfectly tuned and setup out of the box !!!!

2) reasonably good hardware has been used; the (locking) tuners hold the tuning reasonably well, the bridge is good and can be easily adjusted
the guitar comes with a graphite comb, fanned frets for more playing comfort, neck through body design, etc (the features on the product page)

3) for thomann : for a small increase in price better wood for the body (and steel frets) so that it is worth the effort in the long term to upgrade the guitar effectively (!)
and a slightly larger electronics cavity so that it is slightly easier to build in an active system. (9v battery will be very tight with the threeway switch)

Overall for this price, you're getting a pretty good deal for an 8 string. The pickups are decent, a little bass heavy but not as bad as other $300 guitar pickups. The construction is nice and the guitar looks amazing.

However there are some obvious issues which isn't too surprising.

The nut slots are cut very thin, I put a pack of 11-80 DR strings on and about only two of them actually fit in the nut slots, the rest just sit on top of the nut. Which leads to strings going out of tune and fret buzz. Also the bottom corner of the nut by the e string was very sharp, I had to file it down, because it was so bad.
Almost all of the frets past the 12th need to be polished, they are very rough, although, at least there were no pointy fret ends.
The pegs that hold the strings in the back of the guitar aren't held stationary, they fall out when removing the string.
The neck is also very heavy. It's not THAT bad, but the body is extremely light which makes it somewhat unbalanced. Personally I'd take the whole guitar being heavier if it meant there was no neck dive.

But other than that, this is a very nice guitar for getting started on, or learning about 8 strings. I'd definitely recommend it, but just remember you might have to put in a little extra cash or work to fix up some things.

So I went out on a limb and tried this 8 string based on some internet reviews I had seen. I do enjoy the guitar there is no doubt about that; However, it has some issues.

1st The nut on the high side was very sharp when it arrived and uncomfortable to play. Nothing a file didn't fix but annoying nonetheless.

2nd There are some minor high spots in the finish on the back of the neck that are noticeable but don't really effect playing.

3rd Some minor tooling marks are visible on the fretboard but nothing I can feel while playing.

4th When restringing I had 6 out of the 8 Ferrules fall out and I had to glue them back in to hold them in place. This definitely shouldn't have happened, luckily I was able to remedy this.

Final thoughts are this is a Great first 8 string. It's absolutely a fine instrument to try out extended range and experiment with new style for a very tempting price. Please expect some minor issues and have that within your expectations and you should be very happy.

If you look for *cheap 8 string guitars* on google, more often than not you will get recommended Harley Benton and I can see why. That being said its not perfect.

The most noticable thing Is the finish. There are spots on the fingerboard bindings that looks very bad and on the headstock there are spots where it looks like there's no finish at all almost like bare wood. Another thing I will say is the tuners. Maybe that's a 8 string problem or a Harley benton design flaw but the tuning pegs are super close to each other and because they're on the treble side it can be a chore to tune at time. Staying on the topic of tuners this model has locking tuners which is nice, but whoever strung the guitar wrapped the strings around the tunning post even tho it has locking tuners rendering them almost useless, atleast until I do a proper restring.

Now for the positive. The frets work is actually pretty good. they're well seated, no sharp fret ends except maybe further down the fretboard where its slightly more noticable. The frets aren't properly polished but they're clean and shinny and ok smooth while doing bends. No scratchy pots, pickup selector works perfectly and even tho it has cheap pickups they honnestly dont sound that bad. I have a Jackson SCX7 with SD Nazgul and the HBZ's sound nearly has good but not quite. as far as output goes the HBZ pickups seems to be a little hotter than the Nazgul.
The guitar came out the box VERY playable. Good neck relief, action decently low and just a tiny bit fret buzz unplugged.

Overall I think this is a fantastic guitar for the price. If you've never tried an 8 string or fanned frets guitar I would highly recommend this IF you can live with its flaws.