Harley Benton TE-20 SB Standard Series

563

Electric Guitar

  • Body: Poplar
  • Bolt-on maple neck
  • Neck profile: Modern C
  • Fretboard: Amaranth
  • Fretboard radius: 350 mm
  • Dot inlays
  • 22 Frets
  • Scale: 648 mm
  • Nut width: 42 mm
  • Double action truss rod
  • Pickups: 2 TE-Style single coils
  • 1 Volume and 1 tone control
  • 3-Way switch
  • Hardware: Chrome
  • Die-cast machine heads
  • String gauges: .009 - .042
  • Colour: Sunburst, high-gloss
Available since March 2009
Item number 220964
Sales Unit 1 piece(s)
Colour Sunburst
Pickups SS
Fretboard Amaranth
Tremolo None
Body Poplar
Top None
Neck Maple
Frets 22
Scale 648 mm
Incl. Case No
Incl. Bag No
295 AED 74,79 €
Plus 277 AED shipping
The price in AED is a guideline price only
Since we ship from Germany, additional costs through taxes and customs may be incurred
In stock
In stock

This product is in stock and can be shipped immediately.

Standard Delivery Times
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563 Customer ratings

4.3 / 5

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392 Reviews

T
Why buy anything else?
Timddeb. 20.06.2021
Wow! We arrived in France for a couple of days so brought no instruments with us. Things changed rapidly and we realised we were going to be there for longer than we expected. No guitars so we went to the Thomann web site and bought a couple of these, one left handed for me and one right handed for the wife. This is about the RH one. Obviously for something that might end up being used a little I went for the low cost option. Bouyed up by the positive reviews which I took with a pinch of salt, but knowing from experience about Thomann's good customer service I ordered with confidence. The guitars arrived in four working days and we eagerly opened the box. What a surprise was in store for us. First impression, great finish. Closer inspection I could find no faults. Really close inspection and I was questioning Thoman's pricing policy. Under 100Euroes for a great guitar. SO for instance out of the box no issues with the set up. No issues? Yes. Would I adjust it? (I'm apparently the goto guy for my mates). No way! Barre chords? No problem all the way. Intonation. Measured up just fine, on a Tele for heavens sake. So what about the cutaway?
Fender could do with some lessons here. It'seasily reach all the frets. I have seen worse on really expensive kit. The join between the body and the neck was all but indetectable. The gap between the scratch plate and the switch plate was non existant. Fret ends? Here is the one reason for only four stars. The frets themselves, all well polished. No marks on the well finished hardware. Tuners were ok, and it holds it's tune. At this point in the review you might be forgiven for thinking we are enthusiastic! So what about the sound. Obviously whoever makes the pickups has seriously upped their game, or HB have found a better supplier.. Lots of punch, and great tones. Everything you want from a Tele. All the “twang” all the drive, but more. Some mates arrived and we played for a few hours. (Well until after midnight) Everybody tried one of our new guitars, and to a person they were impressed. A lot. We had it plugged into a little VOX 5W amp, with the other four players ere all using amps a lot bigger. Still no problem hearing what we were playing. So the pickups have lots of depth and drive. If we lost them would we buy another? Yes in a heartbeat. In fact we are going to leave these in France and order more when we return to the UK to avoid Carnets. Would we gig with them? Yes definitely! If money were no object would we buy a different Tele? No. Could we afford more expensive gear? Oh yes, but why would we? Would this be suitable for a beginner? We always tell our pupils buy the best you can afford, “beginner” instruments are normally a waste of money because the pupil fights the instrument, thinks they can't learn when in fact a lot of the limitations is caused by the inadequacies of the instrument. So these low cost guitars change the game plan because they are the best you can afford. Buy them once and play them till they are worn out. Are we looking for more pupils? No definitely not. Before you ask we don't teach the RSM curriculum, it's about playing not making money for the RSM. Winge over.
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Review for the Harley Benton TE - 20 SB Standard .
Noodles36 29.11.2013
This is a cheap guitar at €69:00 BUT in fairness " you get what you pay for !!

Its never going to be a Fender , But for €69 its a cracking little guitar ! ..

I would go as far as to say this is a better guitar than the Squier Bellet Telecaster or the Squier Affinity Telecaster .

Fit and Finish ...

looks amazing for a €69 guitar :-0 ! Honestly . I was stunned when I took it out of the box !! Ive paid 1000s for guitars and the finish to the body wasent as good as this guitar :-)

The set up was 80% " Over all ok " Just had to do a little tweeking and in no time it was all good.

The Good ... Everything ... remember this is a €69 telecaster !!!!! How could you complain about anything on a €69 guitar :-) .

The Guitar does have its flaws .

I changed the machine heads/Tuners for a 18/1 ratio to get more stable tuning " at a cost of around €40 , so total it cost €104 for a cracking little guitar !

I used the guitar for some home recording and it done the job very very well ,

The above guitar would suit any one and even if its a gift and the person never picks the guitar up " Its no the end of the world as it only cost €69 :-) , the guitar would just look great sitting in the corner of the room :-) .

As always I would recommend a very cheap mod to everyone buying a guitar , " Get a set of strap locks . this will extend the life of your guitar .

to finish ,,

The above guitar is not a Fender and can not be compared with a €1200 Fender telecaster USA ... BUT for €69 you really can not go wrong .

A friend of mine bought the same guitar after seeing my Harley Benton Tele , he changer out the machine heads/Tuners and put a set of good pickups in the guitar and uses it to gig with and the guitar NEVER gave him one moments trouble !!

I honestly think that most people buying guitars get caught up in the name /brand of a guitar , You could buy the above guitar and hate it or you could love it . Its NOT about the name/brand or where it was made , Its how happy the guitar makes you when you play it ..

Hope the above is of some help .
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FM
Incredible!
Funeral Musician 24.01.2023
The Harley Benton TE-20 being priced even cheaper than the Squier Bullet range, I expected the same quality issues: many crooked pickguard screws, off-center bridge, “fret sprout” (i.e. protruding sharp fret edges), loose neck pocket, etc.

I felt absolutely certain that it was going to have some issues, so, to avoid having to return the faulty TE-20 and wait for a replacement, I ordered two of them! My plan was to choose the least bad one and return the other. But I was in for a sweet surprise... I opened the first box, inspected the guitar, and was shocked to be unable to find any significant issues. But I thought that I had gotten lucky. Then, I opened the second box and inspected the second guitar with an even more critical eye. To my astonishment, the second one was as well made as the first. Honestly, they were both so good, I had no idea whatsoever which one to keep, so I picked the one that had the nicest wood grain. Sure, I could have gotten extraordinarily lucky and received two exceptions, but if two guitars in a row are this good, Harley Benton must be doing something right.

And I am saying this as a perfectionist who is always highly critical of every minute detail, which the vast majority of people do not even notice: all six tuning machines are in a pretty much perfectly straight row, the nut is well cut, there are no sharp fret ends, no obvious blemishes in the chrome plating, the neck plate is parallel to the neck, the bridge is perfectly centered and parallel to the edge of the pickguard, all the dot fingerboard markers are satisfactorily well centered between the frets, and so on. If I had to nit-pick, I would say that the tuning machine gear ratio is pretty low, so it is easy to overshoot when tuning. But it simply requires a bit more concentration.

Other than that, both guitars were pretty much perfect! In terms of tone, the pickups sound like a generic Telecaster, so, if you are looking for that tone, you can get it on the TE-20. This is an excellent choice for a beginner or someone looking for a cheap beater guitar. I imagine, it should be a great modding platform, but first make sure that the Fender parts are compatible with these Harley Bentons. These are really incredible! My four times more expensive Squier had a lot more quality issues than the two TE-20 I received! I am sure that my next beater guitar is going to be some kind of a Harley Benton. There is simply no need to look any further.

UPDATE: After owning my TE-20 for a few months, I decided it was time to do what I always do with all of my guitars: completely disassemble it, fix all of the cosmetic and functional flaws, then put it back together again, and set it up to my liking. As I was doing so, I made a few observations that some potential buyers might find interesting. They are as follows:

1) There were around half a dozen screws in total that turned worryingly easily, and one of the strap pins was completely loose. I fixed all of those issues by reducing the sizes of the problematic holes using splinters of a toothpick dabbed in wood glue.
2) The pickup and control cavities are not shielded (no foil, no conductive paint — nothing), which is perfectly fine for such a mindbogglingly cheap instrument.
3) The routing, except for a couple of small tear-outs, is pretty tidy. Tidier than on my Affinity Telecaster, which cost nearly three times as much!
4) The neck pickup cavity is a lot larger than necessitated by a single coil. It should fit a humbucker and, perhaps, even a P90. Unfortunately, I did not have any pickups at hand to test the fit. But it seems rather deep, so there should not be any issues.
5) Each pickup has a bar magnet attached to the underside of it. Also, since there was some waxy residue on both pickups, I assume, they are potted. I was surprised to see that the bridge pickup had a brass bottom plate, as is usual on vintage Telecasters.
6) The potentiometers are of the mini-size variety. The knobs are metal on the outside but have plastic inserts that fit on the split-shaft posts, just like on my Squier.
7) The soldering is surprisingly good for such an inexpensive instrument — on par with more expensive Squiers!
8) The neck pocket is cut so well that the neck pretty much stayed in place with all four screws removed! I had to carefully wiggle it out of it.

Summing up, this is a truly excellent guitar that is more than good enough to inspire a young budding musician to keep practicing. If it had me, a man in his thirties, smiling from ear to ear, a young child who has never played anything better should be over the Moon. Compared to what I started on back in the day, this is amazing!
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Rating in this price range
Orim 01.02.2020
I bought this guitar for one of my students (according to his budget). I was expecting really a lot of work with setting up/cleaning and fixing factory faults.

To my surprise it came with nicely polished and crowned frets (this is something you really do not expect if the guitar is less than 400 Euro). I was able to lower the string action like on good Gibson. The finishing job is also very nicely done.

Now - keep in mind I am rating this guitar according to other guitars in a price range around 100 Euro.

THE GOODS
- Unbeatable price!
- Really good fret works. Frets are even, crowned and polished (pity I cannot attach pictures here).
- It is in tune (no saddles adjustment were needed).
- Very nice (visually) paint finish.
- Very nice (visually) fretboard finish.
- Thicker, but very comfortable neck with mat finish.
- Working electronics (I really mean it, proper, correct electronics for installed pickups).

THE BADS
- Pickups are not of good quality, I replaced them with set of Chinese pups bought on Amazon (Thomann shall start selling cheap - affordable pickups)
- Tuners - I replaced them with locking tuners from Harley Benton (Thomann brand) - with better ratio 18:1 I believe
- Top and bottom of body is laminated with something that looks like photo-wallpaper (still, guitar looks very good)
- Fretboard (Amaranth ) is dyed with something, I had my fingers black after 20 minutes of playing. So - before you restring this guitar - take some time and clean the fretboard :-)

SUMMARIZING
Exceptionally affordable and well build guitar. Either for beginners, or for some "going on war" situations. Easily (tuners and pickups replacement) customisable to be very playable guitar. And again - do not compare it to guitars or instruments 4-5 or 10 times more expensive. In this price range it is probably unbeatable.
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