Harley Benton ST-62 SB Vintage Series

I have been playing for over 45 years. I started in my teens. I played professionally during my 20s mostly Country Rock and Southern Rock Music. I retired during my 30s once I started a family. I have owned many different brands and models of guitars over the years. Some very expensive ones. Now retired I play only for my own enjoyment and no longer need the expensive stuff. Which leads me to my review.
First off the guitar came well packaged, double boxed. It was obvious that customs inspected it as the box had been opened and re taped. When I opened the box I found this Amazing Strat-ish guitar (Harley Benton) This guitar upon inspection by me was Flawless. The finish on the guitar was perfect no blemishes or any other polish marks, swirls etc.
I plugged it into my practice amplifier to test the electronics and setup prior to installing new strings (something I do on all of my new guitars)
The electronics checked out wonderfully. All of the pots were smooth in functioning and input jack snug.
I got her all tuned up and the sound from the pickups were nothing short of perfect. They gave off a Clear Bell like tone when played lightly and when I put some Ooomf into them they responded in kind. Still clear but they reacted very nice to the change in playing dynamics.
The Setup is spot on. I checked the neck relief, right on at .010 and String Height and action set perfectly. Frets are easy to bend on and there were no high frets or bad spots. The fret ends were smooth as silk so they don't cut into my hand. Neck shape a very nice C shape and kinda meaty but not so much a smaller hand couldn't use it.
The pros are basically everything and I couldn't find any cons.
I kind of specialize in Country Rock, Southern Rock ala The Eagles, Skynrd, Allman Brothers, The Outlaws etc. These are my major influences
There are no need to go into the specs because they are already posted on the website.

A little further info about me.
Due to shipping time, I began purchasing some guitars on Amazon. I will not give any names, ok, I will give initials only FF and while good guitars at a cheap price point, I have found that the Harley Bentons and I now own 4 are far superior in quality and they are well worth the wait! I was notified by a member of the Harley Benton Group on Facebook that I can pay a little extra and have it shipped via UPS 3 day. I guess this will help when I get a hardon for a new guitar and can't wait the 9-10 day delivery to the States.
Thanks to Thomann and all of their employees and I hope you all have a happy holiday season!

Hi!
I ordered this Harley Benton guitar about 2 weeks ago as a small birthday gift for myself and also to replace my aging Squier Affinity strat. I'm rather poor and low-end guitars are all I've ever been able to afford, so trust me when I tell you that I researched the *hell* out of that guitar before making a purchase.
And what can I say about this beauty?
It's... it's so refreshing to have such mind-blowing quality on a 116¤ instrument. When it arrived, the guitar barely had to be set up: the action was and is still perfect after 2-3 weeks of daily playing. The frets do not buzz in the least and the truss rod didn't need any adjustments. The intonation is perfect, the length of the strings is screwed in perfectly and the Roswell pickups are set at a great height for instant, out-of-the-box playability.
I don't know if I lucked out and got an especially well arranged guitar or if I should thank the lovely people at Thomann for setting it up before shipping.
Sound-wise, it's very, VERY satisfying. Great mids, decent treble and the bass will largely depend on the gauge of your strings but I am very impressed with the coherence of the sound on this instrument.
Then again, I'm still a beginner (intermediate-ish~, playing for 5 years on and off), so this is mostly for bedroom playing and jam sessions with friends. However, I can definitely see this guitar being used on a stage if you're starting your performing career.

Feel-wise/feature wise, I took off one small star (would be a half if I could) due to the volume knob having a sizeable gap between the knob and the pickguard, and also, the tremolo needs a bit of a rough touch to be used.

Compared to my old Squier however... My goodness. I will never, ever buy a squier again if I can find a Harley Benton equivalent. The sound is better on HB thanks to the roswell pickups (as opposed to the in-house ones that come on Squiers, where the quality varies a lot more depending on yearly batches); the instrument feels extremely solid and vibrates ever so slightly in your arms when you play it (it's a good feeling, trust me); and all of that for a lesser price than Squier since you're not really paying for the brand name there. In fact, the instrument itself feels a lot more like my friend's 400~ish¤ Jaguar Squier than it feels like regular Affinity/Bullet Squier Strats.

Overall, I'm thoroughly impressed and happy with my purchase. If you're on the fence and have watched countless YT videos about this guitar like I have, trust me, the favorable opinions are genuine.
And then additionally, I would like to thank the people at Thomann who took care of my order. I'm used to ordering off of MusicStore and the speed at which my order was processed and sent, along with the overall transparency and feel of openness I got from the multiple emails Thomann sent me, all have made sure that I'll be ordering on Thomann again.

I bought this back in October 2014 as I had sold my previous electric guitar some months before and needed a cheap Strat copy to play around the flat, and I still play it regularly today despite never having modified or upgraded it besides installing a white scratchplate.

At the time I nearly went for a much more expensive Squier or Vintage brand guitar instead, but settled on this and have zero regrets. The lacquered finish on the neck is utterly luxurious, the pickups sound great, and it feels just like it should, although the C-shaped neck profile felt a bit chunky at first compared to my previous Fender Strat, which had been closer to a V in shape. It was set up perfectly out of the box(unheard of for me, as I'm extremely fussy about the setup of my guitars and previously had come to expect all brand new guitars to play like dogs -not so with this one!)! As with all the Wilkinson pickups I've tried the quality is superb- not perfect, but good enough that I'd need to spend a lot of money to replace them with anything better.

So now for the negative thing. Left in a corner of my flat that had a little bit of direct sunlight for just a couple of weeks, I got back from a holiday to find the laquer on the body had turned a sour, milky colour around the edges, which was a little disappointing at the time, but honestly, for what I paid for this guitar I really cannot complain!

So- looks great, plays great, sounds great!

I use the guitar for indoor playing and recording. So here`s a bit about me. I`m the kind of person who won`t spend a lot of money for gear just because I like it visually. I have read the reviews for this beauty bunch of times and I was delving into the specs for the whole month probably, also watching youtube reviews and all the comments. When it arrived, whoa I was surprised by the finish and the neck texture. It looked and it still looks like a high-end guitar.
I didn`t even have to set the action on it. It has been perfectly set up.
Finish is amazing. I never thought that such a good finish can be done on a budget guitar worth 120 euros. Strings are good but I replaced them with ernie ball .10`s which work better for me. Neck has a nice satin finish for smoother playing which I like. Nut is cut correctly without any flaws. Tuners are also good but I would recommend changing it to locking tuners for greater stability when bending the strings. Pickups are okay for the price, better than noname ones.
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS GUITAR TO ANYONE WHO LIKES STRATOCASTERS ! :)

Originally purchased to relic ,but when guitar arrived it was too beautiful to rough up ,
This guitar is great quality, paintwork is finger licking ,chrome work perfect,tuners smooth,fretwork level, pickups deliver good strat tones with the bridge being useable too.the trem is above average quality,
I previously purchased a squier classic vibe and was disappointed with the poor quality of the hardware ect,this HB is nicer to own and play.so why only 3 stars for quality?
My wife and I both have one of these but several of my wife's had to be returned for build and fish issues unacceptable at any price. Level, but once sorted with good replacements we are thrilled with our purchase, s

Me and my band mates were really impressed with this guitar.

The feel of this guitar is very good and does not come far form my other (more expensive); Bright and responsive pickups, the neck is fast and the frets were good out of the bag.
The setup was done very good and had no problems with it, and simple tuning did the trick . Intonation was alright and no fret buzz, tremolo bridge is not very reliable (its the only downsize i found until now).

I am very happy with this guitar, already made some concerts with her and also recorded some tracks and both in appearance, feel and sound you would not differ this from other most expensive guitars in the market, it is the real bang for the buck

La chitarra si presenta estremamente bella , curata nei minimi dettagli, senza alcuna imperfezione. Unici dettagli che probabilmente indicano un livello economy sono le chivi che comunqu funzionano benissimo e tengono l'accordatura e i potenziometri dei toni e del volume che al tocco sembrano di plastica fragile . Poco evidenti anche le variazioni agendo su di essi. In ogni caso il suono è potente e ben definito , nulla a invidiare a strumenti ben più costosi ( provata in parallelo ad una stato fender Mexico e quasi impossibile trovare differenze sul suono !) Ho ragione di credere che con una cordiera nuova possa migliorare ancora . Pacco arrivato in una settimana confezionato a prova di bomba Consigliatissima

I'll start off with some pros and cons
Pros: The sound is ridiculously good on it, the neck pick up is the best in my opinion but that's with strats in general for me. The tuners are actually pretty good, they're better than on my HB35+ which is about ¤100 more. The hardware feels pretty solid and not easily broken. It definitely looks the part too, I want to paint the pick guard black though, just because I like it more, not because it's terribly offensive to look at (to me at least). There are not sharp fret ends poking out and the output jack is well set and the set up in general is decent. I've only tested Squires in shops, never had one but I've tested a lot: Affinities, Standards, Classic Vibes etc. And I think quality wise it stands between a standard and classic vibe which is pretty good in it of itself.

Cons: There are the usual finish problems you can expect from an HB (although my HB35+ was absolutely perfect) only two though, I'll upload the pictures later. The neck is not what I expected, I expected a skinny neck considering its supposed to be a sixties strat (correct me if I'm wrong!!) but the neck is not much thinner than the hollow body the plastic pickguard protection is annoying as balls as I haven't been able to remove it from under the knobs and when using them it sounds like the guitar came from a cereal box. The colour on the pick ups and the knobs don't match the pick ups are frost white I would say and the knobs are vintage White (you can't really tell from the first picture). By far the biggest con though and I'm sure this an honest mistake and can just get one somewhere else is that the included trembar doesn't fit through the bridge, it's too thick, maybe I'm missing something?

All in all I'm pretty happy with it and I do plan on keeping it for those SRV tones not doing the whole 13 gauge thing though, hope this was helpful for at least one person! *Ps forgive the mistakes it was only so you could hear the sound of it going exclusively through a boss Katana 50, what can I say, I'm a student on a budget and both pieces of gear are giggable so that's a win in my book.