Harley Benton R-458BK MultiScale

Not a bad guitar for a first time 8 stringer, but there are some serious flaws.
First the bad:
1. Several people have mentioned the pickups being garbage, and they are totally garbage. They have a bad buzz/hum when the guitar is not being played or when long-sustained notes are played. Anything low-low mid volume that you want to play will have this buzz/hum present. Luckily, EMG makes several 8 string pickups that easily fit this guitar, but for a pair it costs more than the guitar.
2. The tuners are bad! They don't wind up smoothly and evenly. Also, they lose tune easily with the thicker strings.
3. Here's the big one: the guitar I was sent has a raised fret on the 16th fret and it could've been easily caught in the inspection that Harley Benton claims was done. It causes a nasty fret buzz sound on most of the strings from the 13th fret to the 15th. I can see the raised fret looking down the neck and I wish so badly that somebody would've caught that before sending it to me, because i have to exchange it and hope that the next one doesn't have the fretbuzz.

The good:
1. It's an insanely good deal for the money and I have no clue how they make a profit!? for the neck and body alone, It would be worth the same price. Adding a set of high quality tuners and pickups would cost 2x the guitar, making it something that could be played at shows, band practice and on basic recordings.
2. The neck and body feel great, very smooth and easy to play. I've played mostly 7 strings and 8 string guitars, this one fit right in with any of them. The fanned fretboard is smoothly playable and the fret edges were fantastic. My only complaint was the raised fret and hopefully an exchange will fix this.
3. It's easy to set the guitar up to the right levels. Dialing in the specific adjustments took very little time. I like to try different tunings and string gauges, so this easy adjustment is important.

My advice: This guitar is excellent if you're new-intermediate and want to test the waters with 8 string. If you're a regular player-professional then be prepared for some disappointment and/or after-market work.

I was genuinely surprised in a good way that this guitar exists. For that price - it's a treasure. I mean find me a similar 8-string with that budget.

There are nuances with how it's made but nothing that breaks the experience. For example, there are cavities made for active pickups, but there are passive ones installed. There's no way to replace them with active ones as there's no battery compartment made. If you want to replace with passives - your options are limited as well because you'd have gaps that don't look pleasing. Probably the best fit here would be the Lace's Deathbar 4.0 or something similar (probably custom-made).

Pros:
-It's a multiscale guitar!
-Extremely comfortable to play
-Feels pretty solid
-Looks good

Cons:
-Stock pickups aren't good (there's like 0 clarity)
-Tuners aren't exactly bad, they do their job but I plan to replace them
-Requires extra work to improve grounding (the bridge isn't grounded because there's a layer of paint that prevents contact with a grounding wire)

In conclusion: If you're looking to buy one - be prepared to buy replacements for pickups. So some DIY skills are required. After that, you'll have a pretty solid axe without breaking a bank.

Firstly, to state the obvious, I bought this guitar mostly to be able to play Meshuggah.

I was very skeptical of HB, reading very mixed reviews about the brand but figured I won't lose much if it's very bad since it's so cheap.

Having only played 6-strings before, some things to note:
- It's pretty heavy - both weight and sound ;)
- Fanned frets required no getting used to, felt like any other guitar
- It is in fact a different instrument, I thought I could get away with having this as my only guitar but some 6 string songs become very hard to play

Pickups: I've read many bad reviews about the pickups, but after dialling in a good djent preset, the mud cleared out and I managed to get a good sound out of it. I'm using overdrive, compressor and noise gate on top of low gain and low bass on the panel (on a Boss Katana 2).

Cons:
- Tuners are very bad, they lose tune constantly, need to be replaced 100%
- Bad setup, bone dry fretboard & some rough frets (common and easily solvable issues)
- Loud grounding buzz (relatively easy fix)

Overall: After a good setup and amp settings, this guitar will amaze you. It chugs great, it looks great and costs basically nothing for what it is. If you have a calling towards 8-string music, this is a great guitar to have and you will barely notice its price.

I have read a lot of reviews saying "for the price this is really good" I can't help but disagree, a more accurate statement would be " if I bought this for 3 times the price, it would be really good for the price". The problems I have seen other people comment on, I haven't really experienced.

The bad: Ok the pickups are a bit rubbish so plan to change them. The tuners, yeah they hold their tune but again replacing them is probably a good idea. Also, some new strings are in order.

The good: Where to start, oh yes, the neck, its main feature, no rod adjustment needed, the smallest amount of fret leveling, only on the last couple of frets. The intonation was perfect, the action was perfect, slight adjustment on the pickup height. After these small adjustments and polishing the frets I re-stringed it and was paying with a guitar that I would have been happy to pay £500 for.

So why did I get such a cheep 8 string, I actually wanted something cheep and rubbish for try and refinish, re-hardware and setup so see how good I can make a cheep guitar, but sadly I don't think I'll get this with this, it's already at a point where I wouldn't want to change anything apart from the pickups.

This was bought for my son who had a 6 string (Ibanez) and a 7 string (PRS), but he wanted to try an 8 string. This version had good reviews since the active pickups were dropped and passive were specified by Thomann. The guitar is well finished and set up for the price, much better than some from Ibanez I've had recently that had to go back because of the literally razor sharp fret ends. Not this Harley Benton R-458BK Fanfret. More than acceptable. The playability is good and the neck is very smooth which helps as it is about the width of a motorway - including the hard shoulders. My son loves it and had no complaints until he plugged it in - which bizarrely was quite a while after he got it. The guitar is quite resonant and for practice my son doesn't generally plug it in. But when we did we noticed that the high E string was a lot quieter than the rest. We have assumed that this is because the pickup doesn't quite sit underneath that string far enough. Because it's a fan fret? This is only noticeable when playing clean without compression - then you can hear the odd balance. When played filthy and with lots of compression (normal mode for an 8-string), it isn't a problem. No other problems, tuners are OK and tuning was maintained much better after fitting new Elixirs. Overall very pleased and the value for money is astonishing. We are planning on fitting a set of Tosin Abasi Fishman Fluence (yes, I know, much more than the price of the guitar but still cheap overall), so it will be interesting to see how that goes. Other people have commented favourably. Go for it: Not much to lose, so much to gain.