Harley Benton SC-450Plus CB Vintage Series

When I started to look a new guitar Harley Bentons SCs were one to consider.

I did my homework and browsed through pages after pages thinking what would I like and how much would I be willing to invest. At the end I chose this SC-450Plus with a beautiful red and gold finish.

Of course one knows Thomann and its Harley Benton can bring quality products. But buying a guitar that you have never played or even picked up seemed a bit strange. You miss something when there is no store to visit. No few riffs of rock 'n roll store cliches you try on. No making sure that you get your hard-earned moneys worth.

Reading other reviews there's mentioning on occasional bad apples and returns. But then again also something about how super nice people at Thomann are with their customer support and if you happened to be one that got the bad one they would just replace it with something that works.

I made the purchase and waited for a week or something and then it arrived. I have to say I was blown away how good the guitar is. It's absolutely a piece of art. Well crafted with nothing to complain about. The only minor eyesore I was able to find was two little sores at the nobs. Otherwise craft-wise just perfect.

The only complain I would have about the quality is that there's quite a lot of hum from the humbuckers. But this isn't a deal breaker. Just something that I may have to checkout more and adjust.

The guitar sound so great. Beautiful, strong, beefy, dark sound that absolutely rocks. It's a heavy beast that instantly made me a friend for life. In closing never could I have dreamed how great guitar I could get so cheap.

Ordered this guitar more than a week ago on a Monday and it arrived a week later on a Monday. Not bad for an international shipment.

As with all Thomann products the packaging is extremely great. The guitar was wrapped in some soft wrapping which was in a box that was in another bigger box filled with giant bubble wrap. This packaging could survive a blast from a tank!

The guitar has some minor flaws which are probably expected for this price but nothing serious.

The finish is excellent. But the product pictures shown aren't very accurate. It's much lighter in color than in pictures. The red isn't as deep as shown and the brownish middle is actually quite yellow, almost like a lemon drop.
Despite that it looks great (maybe even better in my opinion)

The neck is extremely comfortable to play.
The rounded joint where the neck meets the body makes playing high notes very, very, very comfortable.
The binding is a bit rounded so there aren't any edges that you can feel.
No fret buzz, although the frets could use a bit of additional sanding since not all of them are smooth.

The tuners are very smooth and hold the tuning very well.

The nut is plastic. Actually the nut probably is the worst part of the guitar. It's ok but the grooves for the strings are made a bit sloppily..

The description doesn't say this but this guitar comes with coil splitting push-pull pots. Awesome!
Tip: dont try to forcefully remove the knobs. I wanted to remove them to get rid of the stickers more easily that were underneath and I broke my bridge volume pot... 10 minutes after opening the box...
Seriously those knobs are very hard to remove, be careful!

Every plastic part on the guitar (knobs, cavity plates) feels very cheapish, especially the pick guard.

Finally the pickups. These Wilkinson pickups are quite decent. They actually sound good. I like them.

Cons:
Not fully polished/sanded frets
Cheap plastics
Knobs!
Inlay on the headstock isn't symmetrically aligned (but who cares)

Pros:
Easy access to high frets
Coil splitting
Looks fantastic

Final words:
It plays, sounds and feels like a Les Paul. No need to say anything else.

Very impressed at this guitar for the money, or even for 3x the money. Better quality than my Fender Strat in a number of areas. Fret ends finished smoothly, nut cut well and at the right height and width for all strings, action low, no fret buzz, intonation near perfect (just had to adjust 2 strings a little bit), the Roswell Humbuckers sound great with well rounded tones, slightly hot which I like. The coil split opens up new tones which is a nice feature you normally only get on more expensive guitars.

The tuners are nice and stiff and do the job fine, they have held in tune remarkably well. The pegs don't look great, not the marbled effect of more expensive pegs, but doesn't bother me. No tuning problems with the nut which I assume is plastic - strings move freely through the nut and it's easy to tune precisely.

Overall finish is near flawless - just a couple of small blemishes on the neck binding varnish (presumably fret end file damage) and varnish rubbed on top of head stock - nothing worth crying about. One of the tuners is a bit misaligned on the back but you'd never notice unless looking very close.

The paint, varnish and bindings all round are excellent, no colour bleeding or paint spots anywhere. Opened up the back and can confirm it's unshielded so I will probably add shielding in future. Volume knobs are a bit too easy to turn, versus tone knobs which are nice and stiff and very smooth to rotate - feel quality, better quality than the knobs on my Strat. Pickup switch feels good too with a positive action.

The frets came unpolished but perfectly playable, fret ends are all filed well and frets set properly, which I can't say for my Fender Strat . I have already ordered a polishing kit - no big job. Inlays are perfectly set and centered. The Laurel fretboard is lovely and dark - darker than the photos, maybe I got lucky, but it's as dark as a good rosewood board, bordering on ebony (which my Epi Custom Prophecy has). Fretboard is a bit dry so I will oil it at some point. The inlays are well cut and centered and have a nice pearl effect and look nicer than the website photos. The mahogany body is a two piece and looks great on the back side. Neck is a 3 piece and has a nice shape and feel. Neck set joint is flawless.

Weight is slightly heavy as it's mahogany and not chambered. 4.2 kg versus about 3.6 for my Strat. No biggie. It is a Les Paul after all! There is a rounded maple top of about 10mm thickness with I presume a flamed maple veneer on top of that. Arrived well packaged, double boxed with added cardboard packing material. Took 9 days to arrive to UK which is a bit longer than stated.

Been having a blast playing it, really sounds great. Every bit as good as my double bucker Epi Custom SG and Fender Strat, both of which cost many times as much. Already considering my next HB purchase if the 'budget' ones are this good!

The fret ends, binding, and fingerboard are all top quality and this is very unusual for a guitar in this price range and even double the price. The fingerboard wood is quite dark for Pau Ferro wood and looks better than most rosewood these days. The frets are a little bit scratchy to start with, but they polish up quickly by playing the guitar and bending the strings a lot. The nut slots are cut perfectly, again this is something normally only seen on much more expensive guitars. The cherry to yellow sunburst body finish is really well done and the cream binding on the top edge of the body has been finished very well. Although the maple veneer on the face of the guitar body does not have a really deep flame figuring it is just enough to make the guitar look very expensive. The hardware (tuning pegs, bridge and tailpiece) all seem to be quite good quality, and the pickups are very good for a guitar of this price with the added feature of being able to switch them to single coil mode by pulling up on the volume knobs. The only thing that has caused any issue is that the pickup toggle switch was poor quality. The hex nut hadn't been tightened and the switch rotated in the hole but, when I gently tightened the nut, the threaded cylindrical section broke off from the remainder of the switch. I have bought a replacement switch of better quality and will solder it in place because I have experience with electronics, whereas most other people would have returned the guitar. Overall I am very happy with my purchase.

The Good
It arrived in fine condition via UPS. Upon unboxing, tuning and playing I was pleasantly surprised that there were no major issues and the fretboard was nicely prepared with nicely filed fret ends and the correct amount of bowing in the neck. The inlays on the fretboard are perfectly set. The intonation was also pretty good and the tuners hold tune. The action was a little high but that was fixed in seconds. Also, the flamed maple on my copy is very nice and more pronounced than comes across in the photos. The burst also fades much more gently that is apparent in the photos. The pickups also sound great in my subjective opinion and remind me very much of my 1970s Ibanez Lawsuit Les Paul that I foolishly sold as a young man. Aesthetically, it is a beautiful guitar.

The Bad
It's hard to believe how thoroughly it was really checked by a real human as one of the tone knobs was only half way pushed down onto it's pillar. It was a quick fix, but you'd think that was very obvious. There are a few miniscule bleed spots of stain on the binding and a dollop of varnish from overspray on the body end of the fretboard binding. But these are very minor nit-picks and aren't really visible unless you jam the guitar in your face. Overall the finish is actually pretty nice for such a budget guitar.

The Ugly
One of the bridge post sockets clearly was hammered in at a slightly wonky angle. It doesn't seem to effect intonation that I can tell but it's something that should have been caught in QA. The other complaint I have is about the bridge saddles not having enough travel on the low A and D strings to achieve perfect intonation. It's not terrible but it's probably an issue with the nut which, as others have pointed out, is probably the weakest part of this instrument.

Highly recommended but be prepared to do a bit of fiddling and fine tuning.

I finally got my SC-450Plus CB after a long Customs delay at each end, and it was well worth the wait. I've heard a few comments about minor issues with finish and color, but I have to say I can't find anything about the looks of this guitar that is not perfect. The only thing I found wrong was that one of the tone knobs was not put on quite lined up, so I popped it off and replaced it and now it's truly perfect! It looks great, sounds great, and plays great. It's not just a great guitar for the money, it's a great guitar. It would be a great guitar for a touring musician, or really for anybody. The pickups are really hot, the action is like butter, and the fingerboard is nice and smooth, with perfectly rounded fret ends. It really would stack up against an Epiphone.

I've been intrigued by Harley Benton guitars for some time now, but was always a bit of a snob in terms of what name was on my headstock. But I was drawn to the excellent looks and styles of the HB range on Thomann.

I spent a good bit of time researching these guitars; there are a lot of YouTube video reviews of them, and the vast majority were positive. Overwhelmingly positive for that matter. "How can this guitar be so good for such a small price tag?" was the general conclusion to most of the reviews. And even the less positive reviews admitted the guitar was still pretty good.

I own Epiphones and Squires, as well as Gibsons and Fenders. So eventually I figured what harm would it do to give HB a try, and I ordered it. Nervously I might add! There was a slight delay before it shipped as it had to be quality checked, but I figured this could only be a good thing.

It arrived six days after I ordered it (including a weekend), and it was well packaged. No damage spotted and no issues. Taking it out, my first impression was that the guitar is beautiful out of the box. It gleams. The colour is fantastic. It feels solid, heavy, like a "proper" guitar. Nothing flimsy, no rough frets, no dry fretboard, no loose switches or knobs. Wow.

The set up was perfect, string height was spot on (the strings it came with are supposed to be 10s but feel lighter). Often with Gibsons and Epiphones I find you have to use a set of 11s with a wound 3rd, otherwise it plays out of tune, but not this time. The intonation was perfect. And after stretching out the strings a few times, it seemed to stay in tune perfectly. The tuning heads may be cheaper, but they feel the same to me as anything I've used on an Epiphone before.

Plugged it in and it sounds amazing. Like, super beefy and loud and with great sustain. You can split the coils which I never really bother with but good to have the option. The three pick up options are clear and distinct.

Soloing, chording, everything sounded and felt good - fast, smooth, and while the neck is slightly chunkier than on Fenders or Squires, it's not too big. You just feel like you are playing a really solid, quality guitar.

I had a Gibson SG that cost €1,500 and I can safely say I prefer playing the HB. I had so many issues with that SG; the set up was terrible and it never really stayed in tune. The intonation was never right. The tuners felt plastic and cheap. Bit shocking for a guitar that costs nearly ten times the amount for this one. And I don't have the same problems with this guitar!

Harley Benton are obviously doing something right and are changing the game for budget guitars. But don't think of it as a "budget" guitar - think of it as a quality guitar that just doesn't cost that much. The quality here has really gotten me thinking about what guitars I'll be buying in the future.

Bought this to be a cheapo blues machine as a supplement to my Mexican strat - and I am wowed by the quality on display here. The humbuckers sound great, and the double coil-split offers fantastic customizability. There were some QC issues with very slightly chipped binding in spots, a few spots of cosmetic gunk on the neck (that were easily scraped off with my fingernail), and, as others have mentioned, paint issues around the backplates. But none of that keeps the guitar from looking great overall, and since it came with a fantastic setup out of the box, the most important boxes - how it plays and how it sounds - are emphatically checked. This does not feel like a <$200 guitar, it feels like a high-quality Epiphone, and is an otherworldly value-for-money offering. Love it!