Harley Benton ST-62DLX OW Vintage Series

At this price point, the Harley Benton is incredibly competitive. The visual aesthetic is very cool (if gold is your thing), the feel is nice, frets are smooth, and there were no visual defects that I could see. It absolutely beats every Bullet Strat I've played, and those go for a similar price.

When played through high gain, there is a strange ringing sound that's almost like fret buzz. It's not though (setting the action ridiculously high and the buzzing still remained). I then thought it might have been the springs, but applying the foam mod to deaden the springs didn't help either. It's not a problem for recording, as I can slap on Soothe2 before the amp sim and cut down on most of the sound.

Using the tremolo bar will throw the guitar out of tune. No amount of string stretching or changing of string gauge helped this - not even throwing on a set of locking tuners (though this did make string changing more convenient, but then again, how often do I change strings?). I'd recommend modding the bridge to work as a hardtail.

The guitar needed a little intonation adjustment out of the box.

All that aside, the sound is good, the feel is great, and there is much less single coil hum compared to my Bullet Strat which makes it much more fun to play with high gain. For the price, this Harley Benton could be an excellent modding platform too.

Overall, for around £150, this Harley Benton Strat has been the perfect budget replacement for my Bullet Strat.

Neck on the "Deluxe" model had some nasty spikey fret ends on delivery. Some of the screw holes for attachment of the scratchplate (pickguard) have not been lined up perfectly thus there are screws which sit proud at untidy angles which looks to have been caused by being drilled before fitting the neck as the scratchplate is very tight to the neck pushing it out of alignment with the holes. The pickup selector would not select bridge pickup (either alone or with middle) until I fixed it (had this been tested it would have failed). Needed a significant setup including filing nut slots, neck shim and fret levelling.
Well that's the negative out of the way, now the positive. Following setup plays and feels good, tuners are good quality and hold tune, vibrato bridge is fine and works well. It sounds great, like a real ST which is certainly not a given even with more expensive ST types. Pickups are very good, no need to change (take note I changed the pickups on my other three Harley Benton electrics). Other than what I have already pointed out the finish is good, Olympic White being a slightly yellow white somewhere between White and Vintage White though all the gold plate and anodising may not be to everyone's taste; bear in mind the aluminium scratchplate provides decent hum shielding.
I've had the scratchplate off to inspect the electronics. Predicatably there is a PCB type selector rather than a blade type which is fine with me. Very pleasantly surprisingly, the pots are full size (!) and there are two (green) tone capacitors, one for each tone pot both unusual for budget guitars. Perhaps there is more than meets the eye to the "Deluxe" tag.
Summarising: as stated above, not quite all it should be out of the box but with a significant setup is now a jolly good instrument at a great price though less so if, unlike me, you need to pay for someone else to do the setup.

The all 5 star is on the price of this guitar, and what you're getting for the amount it costs, you could not give it any less than five stars for everything. There are a few minor issues like the gold looks cheap close up but back up a little bit and it looks absolutely gorgeous, the main issue I have with this is the tremolo block is a much smaller block than in the photo of this guitar, apart from that at this price point you can not expect more, and the best thing about this guitar is the playability, and this is the most important thing for any guitar, it doesn't matter how much you spend on a guitar if the playability is bad you're not going to enjoy playing it as much, or you'll be struggling with it, possibly fighting with it at times, and that's exactly what you don't want when your learning to play.
Harley Benton has not just made a copy of an Stratocaster they've also put their own stamp on it like the radius and the neck shape, so bear that in mind that it has a few of its own original views on the ST.
Well done Harley Benton for not just copying but putting your own spin on a classic with playability that I'm just going to enjoy for the rest of my days because this guitars going nowhere.

bought the guitar in early january and have been using it for basically everyday. the cheap price definitely is better if youre looking for a guitar as a beginner and are unsure if you want to commit to guitar yet. throughout the 9 months it has served its purpose and in the early months had no flaws, however lately there were key flaws: pickups sometimes not working, the tone switches barely making a change, the neck starting to bend and so on. buy this if you really are only just starting off, but if youre more towards the intermediate side already id suggest going for some of the stronger brands (i. e. jackson, fender, esp...).

the guitar is actually more of a rose gold in real life, depending on the lighting you're in - but it's still absolutely gorgeous.

i am in love with everything about this guitar. the look, sound, functions, playability, everything. it has a nice weight to it as well and looks a whole lot more expensive than it actually is, especially in pictures/videos. it did arrive with a good few imperfections around the neck but it really isn't very noticeable and has no effect on the sound so i don't mind too much. overall just a great buy. well worth waiting 2 months for it to finally be available on thomann