Harley Benton HB-35 BK Vintage Series

I wanted to wait a little while until I could give this guitar a good review. So after having the guitar for 4 months, here it is.
Pros: Upon receiving it it was exactly as advertised. The finish in all black was perfect. As a luthier I had trouble finding more than a couple of imperfections in the paint and bindings. Well done.
Once I started playing it, of course it needed adjustments but at first was happy.

Cons: I did notice the guitar would go out of tune regularly. I tried to see what it was and after changing the strings to a better quality, doing some work on the nut, I was able to get the guitar to stay in tune for at least a couple of songs. I am not a hard picker or big string bender either. The tuners are on the cheap side and 2 of them have a lot of ‘play’ in them. Upgrading to locking tuners should help. The frets have started to sprout and because they weren’t cut back properly, they are causing the binding on the neck to crack.
Still, for the money not a bad buy.

UPDATE - I love everything about the guitar, and you can’t beat it for the price. I just updated the pickups by putting in a set of Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates in. Yeah I know the pickups cost more then the guitar, but I can always take them out and reinstall the old pickups if I sell or trade the guitar in. Also, I recorded the guitar before and after changing the pickups. WOW what a difference. Sounds as good as a vintage Gibson ES-335 a friend owns.

I needed a semi-hollow guitar for fulfilling sounds in the studio, without damaging my wallet too much...
Having seen this, and armed with some skills in altering guitars(I've been throwing screwdrivers and soldering irons at every guitar I've owned for the last 20 years!) I pulled the trigger.

The guitar arrived not entirely flawless, but not enough for me to want to send it back-in consideration of how much it cost, and what I was about to do to it!
There was a minor cracking blemish to a section of the fretbooard binding, a small depression in the top's finish where the bass side bridge post is seated and looking through the bass side f-hole there has been a small cover up job performed on the inerior of the back laminate, with a thin slice of wood-perhaps to cover a knot or other natural flaw.

I had some spare parts taken out off changing parts from other guitars to help me change this one.
Kluson tuners.
Gibson Burstbucker II(for the Bridge)
ESP/Ltd ST203 Humbucker(for the neck)
And I bought..
Brown switch knob
Black-silver top vol/tone knobs

But the most useful change is to re-locate the switch and knobs to their 'correct' places!
Drop the Neck Tone into a new hole, the Neck Vol into the old Neck Tone hole, and the 3way into the old Neck Vol. Finally plugging the original 3way hole with a simple flat dome black plastic plug from a hardware store.
OK, so the look will not be perfect, but a damn sight better than how it arrived and at this money who would care? Naturally this mod works easier on a black finsh than either of the others.

I was lucky to have what would have been otherwise more expensive change outs simply lying around unemployed, but with all this done the guitar has totally opened up and come alive!

Don't forget the construction is of laminate maple, which is fundamentally the same as certain custom shop instruments from well known manufacturers. Simply put these are made in such numbers to allow it coming in at this price point-they're principally not the easiest guitars to construct either!

At the very end this is now a very useable product, capable of outgunning other like guitars of much higher price.

Now let's make some noise!!

Cons:

The pick guard bolt used for mounting to the angle bracket was sticking up proud of the guard.
Very easy scrap your hand or catch your pick while strumming.
I used a large drill to countersink the bolts? head below the surface of the pick guard.

The tuners follow the lines of the Headstock.
The two center tuning machines are pushed in.
The manufacturing process is trying to keep the distance from the outside of the Headstock the same this causes a issue.
The strings going to the two top tuners barley clear the center tuners.

The saddles slots are cut too deep common on Asian G style clones. This causes issues, the thinner strings hit the back of the bridge before going into the tail piece. Yes I raised the tail piece a small amount to correct angle to allow for clearance between the strings and the back of the bridge.

Input Jack came loose in a few days.
It?s threads barley make it thru the body and there is no room for a washer between the fastening nut and the body. I can?t see if there is a locking star washer on the backside of the jack. Why not use a small square metal plate to mount the jack and make it easier to maintain.

No system to restrain the wiring harness from showing thru the F hole.

Pros:
Finish is fine

I bought this guitar because of its look and for fun. I intend to use it for playing live gigs of loud rock, punkrock music.

First thing is that you should somehow imagine what expect for that amount of money...
Firstly, if guitar costs 170¤ don't expect it has the best pickups and is made of the best parts (tuning machines, switches,..). Secondly, don't expect all the aesthetics details on guitar are how it should be. Mine had a few small crack in lacquer on the guitar neck, the dots on the upper side of fretboard are not centered on the whole lenght and there is some crack on a fretboard.

But nevertheless, guitar suprised me with a very playable and comfortable neck. Though while playing it went easly out of tune so, the first thing I did is that I change the strings and tuning machines. I bought Gibson PMMH-015 and they are doing the job well. As I said I play rock, punkrock riffs and with a distortion on the amp I must admit that there is no right "kick off" tone out of those pickups that the guitar come with. So I also changed the bridge pickup with the DiMarzio Super Distortion. And know the guitar serves me well and I am happy with it.