Harley Benton R-458MN WH MultiScale

I'll get straight to it.

Pros:
-The guitar is well built. Having fanned frets and it being an 8 stringer at this price range sounds all too good to be true, but it holds true to what it's advertised to be.
-The important parts, such as the neck is reliable.
-the tuners aren't top of the line but it does the job well enough to warrant as a positive thing for its price point.
-The bridge has great intonation range and its sturdy! wow! That's important! And you nailed it!
-There's conductive shielding paint on the humbucker cavities and the electronics cavities!!! something i didn't expect from a $150 guitar!!
-The fret ends actually had some sort of sanding/polishing done to it! My hands won't get cut going up and down on it!! wowow! Minimal work is required to get to the ideal specs. Big thumbs up.

Cons:
-mine came with a dead capacitor! WOO! Thankfully I'm a tinkering type of person, and I replaced 80% of the original electronics there cause..(segway to the next point)
-The electronics are kinda bad. But that's to be expected for a guitar at this price point. Though QC could've at least noticed the dead capacitor...or at least hear that something is wrong with the output of the guitar.
-lots of blemishes on the neck. A couple of raw unfinished spots, some scratches, uneven finish, and lots of coarseness when you run your hand at the back of the neck. Hopefully it will smooth itself out when it gets worn in.
-some of the frets are already worn?? I don't know what's going on but this isn't even B-Stock and i have crazy inconsistent frets on the one i got. Some frets looked untouched, some looked sanded and scratched but not polished to spec, some already dented by the string. whats going on haha...
-The nut doesn't have a curve to match the neck's radius curve. Nut is flat and requires lots of work to make the strings be at proper height on nut side. That i don't mind as much, just more tinkering for me.

Regardless of all of its issues, I still like this guitar, The cost of this guitar is equivalent to a months worth of Diet Pepsi for a family that drinks a lot of Diet Pepsi, and my family drinks a lot of Diet Pepsi. But this guitar is no sugar drink. It will make you work hard to make it like how you want it to be, but you'll like what you make out of it once you do.

It'd be neat if Thomann sent me a new, better capacitor, and maybe one of them weird German drinks too. I need a break form all this Diet Pepsi.

It is alright if you are willing to do additional work on it. The stock tuners sorta do the job, but the ratio is low, and there is A LOT of slack, so I would suggest swapping them if ever climbing on stage with this guitar. Stock pickups are OK, but are on the noisy side and required me to increase the noise floor on my noise gate. The neck is wonderful and the fretwork is more than acceptable. The stock strings are too thin even for standard tuning, with the 8-th string being barely thicker than the 7th string on, say, and Ibanez (65 vs 59). My biggest issue is with the nut, though. While it is made of a good material (Nubone), it is quite badly slotted (the vertical and horizontal angles sometimes seem random). Also for thicker strings one would actually need to re-slot the nut, which from one side means that the proper files were used for the stock string gauges, but from the other this procedure will probably be a must, as thicker gauge strings are highly recommended.

For the price of the guitar it probably is OK, but more attention to the nut and thicker strings would have probably cost not more than 15 EUR per guitar, which in all honestly I'd be happy to pay, was there such an option.

For the money, simply untouchable value. Arrives intonated, almost fully in-tune, nut properly curved, with a medium action (which I prefer because I have a heavy right hand). Now if you're buying this 8 as a first one (like I did) with the intention to swap things around/tinker (like I will be doing) then this is perfect, because there are a few things to tweak that will take this absolutely to the next level.
Frets are absolutely playable as is, but could use a polish which I will do when my new strings arrive. Pickups are passable at best, but given that's the most expensive investment to upgrade in the guitar they'll serve for the time being. Electronics are the cheap chinese sort, with the sort of 3 way switch that you find on squier guitars and things of that sort.
Now I'll say I think the strings are the biggest let-down on this guitar, which is comical given that they can be easily swapped out so it's not even that big of a deal. But a low .65 on that low F# (or F if you're playing Meshuggah covers) is incredibly floppy and almost unusable, as your fretting hand with any regular amount of pressure will absolutely drive the pitch sharp. I'm going to be putting an .80 on as soon as my strings arrive in the mail.
My one complaint about the guitar that isn't easily fixed is the location of the 3 way selector, I hate how the volume pot is between the bridge and the selector. I fumble over it every time, but I suppose I will get used to it.
The biggest drawback about ordering this guitar was the 3 month (yes, you read that right) ship time due to the pandemic shortage. I knew it would take a while, and I'm not mad about it. I just figure people should know it's taking that long. Overall, strong recommend. Once you put in the time and elbow grease I doubt any sub-$1500 8 string would be able to compete with this beauty.

I have many old and new guitars in all price and quality ranges and just wanted to see what an 8 string multiscale guitar feels like without having to invest a lot of money. This was the obvious choice. When the guitar arrived the set-up was actually quite good and was in playable condition out of the box, but needed to be set-up again after I changed the stock strings to heavier bottom strings. The instrument's construction is quite good, I did not see any paint, finish or construction issues, tight neck pocket, etc.. It's well-balanced and the fret edges were smooth enough, although the frets themselves felt a bit raw and needed a little polishing and smoothing, no big deal. I liked the smooth feel and shape of the neck. As mentioned in other reviews, the nut needs a bit of filing work for the strings to go through properly; again no big deal. After a professional luthier set it up for me, the heaviest string still has some buzz but I guess I sort of expected that and can live with it. Now on the downside, the pickups are really where I had to lower my overall ratings for this guitar; they are very noisy and muddy and thus probably of quite low quality. I could live with the clean tones which are acceptable, but once OD/distortion kicks in, it becomes difficult to distinguish between the notes I am playing, the sounds seem to blend into each other in an overall noisy background. BTW, I am by no means a heavy distortion user or heavy music player generally, although I do like my OD/fuzz/distortion and I have dozens of guitars with all kinds of pickups for a comparison with, again, dozens of analog and digital effects. At this price point I can live with using this guitar for playing experimental free jazz type of stuff with clean(er) tones, it is a good instrument for an introduction to practicing on 8 strings and a MS fretboard for developing different skills. Presuming that this guitar is normally meant for players with heavier tonal expectations, I'd have to say that something would have to be done about the pickups, which I may decide to invest in at some point.

This guitar is my intro to extended range guitars, i have never played more than a six string. Fan frets are really easy to get used to.
The guitar looks beautiful from afar, but the attention to details is a little lacking.

Finish
You can see the scratch marks from the sanding under the finish and the paint is missing in the hole for the pickup selector. The finish of the neck is a nice satin, feels really good in the hands. The profile of the neck is fairly rectangular with prominent "shoulders".


The fret ends are dressed decently, but the levelling is not very well done and the frets are not recrowned and polished, so there is some fret buzz, intonation is a tiny bit off and the rough surface of the frets makes bends feel awkward. The nut is quite terrible, I will definitely change it.

The pickups are a bit muddy, but that was no surprise and they can easily be changed.

Overall it's a nice intro to extended range guitars, but only if you are capable of tweaking some things and setting the guitar up properly. For the price it's definitely worth it.

Up front, I'm really pleased with this guitar. For metal (and for the money), it's almost perfect. Now, the details:

Pros:
-Great build quality
-Comfortable, easy to play
-No fret buzz
-No protruding fret edges
-No hum or crackle from the electronics
-Pretty well set up out of the box

Cons:
-The stock pickups are... okay. You can get some nice heavy tones out of them, but cleans – not so much. But again, for this price, it is to be expected.
-My guitar came with a little dent on the headstock. Not sure whether that comes from the factory or uncareful transportation.
-The frets on my guitar were noticeably unpolished.

I've had this guitar for about 5 months now, since March 2020 (it is August 2020 as I'm writing this) and I feel ready to share my thoughts about it.

I want to start out by saying that I'm an intermediate guitar player (about 13 years of play) who has only ever owned cheap (think sub-300€) guitars, so my standards aren't extremely high. Even considering this, I went into this purchase with my expectations not too high up, despite all the glowing reviews I've read online. And let me tell you: I expected to take a much worse instrument out of that box. Here are some of the things I love about it:

- Looks: it looks great. Outside the places where the guitar has been cut, like the neck slot and pickup cavities, the finish is super smooth.
- Playability: I love the neck on this thing. Mine is maple with a maple fretboard, but from what I've seen you may get it with amaranth on the fretboard. Now, your mileage may vary since it *is* an 8 string guitar, so the neck is dauntingly wide compared to a traditional 6 string, but the shape and smoothness of the back of the neck (which is unfinished, completely natural wood) makes it super comfortable to play. Even the fanned frets haven't given me a lot of trouble (with the exception of barre chords closer to the nut), but again, your mileage may vary. The hardware (pickup selector and pots) feel great, very smooth. Also, the fret ends are not poking out at all.
- Out of the box setup: The guitar came pretty decently setup (outside a few things I mention below). The action was pretty low (I did lower it a bit more to my personal liking), the neck was straight as an arrow and the intonation was pretty much perfect.

Onto the negative:

- The nut. This was my first big gripe with the instrument. I haven't seen any more reviews complaining about this, but mine was horribly cut. It was so bad that the 8th string would just jump out of the nut slot if I plucked it normally with a 1.4mm pick. I had to deepen it and widen it by hand (my first time doing this) and now the problem is fixed, for the most part. The badly cut nut also affects tuning, in that the string binds on it. My tip is to always tune *up* to pitch, that way the nut won't be a problem for stability. I'll be looking for a luthier to see if they can do a nut replacement.
- Pickups: they're muddy. That's it. Not a lot of clarity, bad string separation. This is somewhat manageable if you adjust your amp settings a bit, but the pickups are definitely one of the first things I'm upgrading.
- Out of the box presentation: the fretboard had some sawdust on it which I had to clean off. There were also some wood shavings around the neck slot, which came out fine.
- Frets: I know I said the fret ends were fine, but the fret surfaces... Ouch. Extremely rough out of the box. Bending a string was like running a block of metal along a bed of nails. This smoothed out naturally with play and the frets feel fine by now, but during the first week or two, they felt pretty bad. I will be purchasing a fret dressing kit to try and polish them properly. Also, my 24th fret is slightly raised on one end, such that fretting my high E string at fret 23 produces an E, instead of the expected D#. Luckily, I pretty much never use those frets so this isn't an issue. This does not happen on any other string or fret.

Those are the biggest things I want to point out about the guitar. You may be thinking I pointed out a lot more negative than positive; do I regret this purchase? Would I buy it again? The answers to those questions are "Absolutely not" and "For under 200€, absolutely yes!". The playability of the guitar to me far outweighs the flaws I pointed out. I've been having lots of fun playing it and if something happened to it I would definitely get another (and who knows, the second one might come with a better cut nut ;) ).

In conclusion, if you want to try an 8 string on the cheap, I can definitely recommend this one. Especially since the biggest flaws are all in upgradable parts, so if you're willing to invest more, you can just upgrade this guitar and end up with a amazing instrument which rivals guitars 10x its price.

Update (April 2021): it has been a little over a year since I've had this guitar. I've replaced the pickups with Fishman Fluence (Tosin Abasi set, they fit perfectly in the pickup cavities with no modification/routing required), installed locking tuners, and got a luthier to swap the nut for a bone one and do a professional set-up and fret leveling. The guitar is now pretty much flawless. Sounds incredible with a ton of versatility thanks to the pickups I installed and feels amazing to play. It was already amazing for the price, but if you're willing to upgrade down the line, it just makes it that much more worth it. I've left the star ratings as they were before since I want them to remain relevant to what the guitar is like out of the box, but in its current state, I'd rate it 5/5 in every category.