Harley Benton SC-450Plus VB Vintage Series

Long(ish) story, but please stick with it as I had to.

I ordered this guitar just before Xmas (2019) and was a bit gutted when it arrived. The guitar had obviously taken a knock in transport leaving the bridge bent and the rear strap button loose, with cracked paint around the button. I was straight onto Thomann who offered either a discount and replacement parts, a replacement guitar or a refund. I decided to put up with the minor faff of a replacement. One other minor gripe was slightly offset tuners leaving more tuning key exposed on the underside of the guitar than at the top.

Onto the second guitar and after my initial experience left me dubious as to what I'd receive I have to say I'm stunned. I've only played a few Gibson LP's when I went to buy one 15 years ago in a local store and walked out with a US strat...as you do. I liked the LP but couldn't say I liked it enough to spend £1500+. As well as the strat I also own a Squier vintage modified tele, Gibson SG special, PRE SE custom 24 and in my time have owned an LTD EC-1000 (great sounding but couldn't stop it buzzing without expensive work) and an Ibanez hollowbody artcore thingummy and a different SG special but I've still always wanted an LP style guitar. The quality of this guitar is up there with all my keepers and yet it's the cheapest guitar I own. This is not a good guitar for £140, it's a good guitar full stop. You know how some guitars feel ok and others feel like a proper musical instrument that you really want to play. If all Harley Bentons are this good (as long as they haven't been dropped from a great height) I'll be getting a few more. Very happy today and very pleased with how Thomann dealt with my issues. My intention was to swap out the pickups for a SD 59 and JB but now it's in my hands I don't feel the need. The neck is very glossy which I knew wouldn't be to my taste but that's an easy fix with a few sheets of high grit paper and a splash of water. Seems a shame cause the neck looks so nice. Strings are OK ish (not that that matters as new strings is always job number one) and frets don't feel rough as some others have stated. The fretboard seems a shade lighter than standard rosewood but it has a beautiful grain and looks all the better for that. The tuners do their job and it stays in tune.

One day I'll actually learn to play these things :)

I'm a passionate Les Paul lover and sunburst afficionado, and this guitar looked just insanely pretty for the ridiculous price so I impulse bought it to see what it's actually worth as an instrument. In short:

- Out of the box, it's a very decent beginner's instrument so beautiful that you'll want to pick it up again as soon as you put it down.

- With a bit of care you can make it even prettier by addressing the minor blemishes that are to be expected from a guitar in this price range.

- If you're prepared to invest a little more money for a couple of replacement parts and quite some time and elbow grease to really upgrade it, you'll be as amazed as I am now.

Pros:
- gorgeous looks;
- unbelievable price point;
- very comfortable neck, much more accessible on the high end than a regular Les Paul;
- very decent tuners and stop bar tailpiece;
- warm PAF flavoured alnico pick-ups;
- robust and reliable selector switch;
- fine and smooth volume pots;
- very nice pot knobs;
- good quality nut;
- very nicely machined, filled and lacquered mahogany body and neck;
- real massive maple cap with fine flamed veneer;
- overall quite good setup out of the box.

Cons:
- stock Tune-o-matic bridge unworthy of this nice guitar;
- rather raspy frets and quite coarse fretboard spoiling bends and vibratos;
- cheap looking plastics;
- minor dents and blemishes on the otherwise nice finish;
- smooth but not very articulate tone pots;
- some loose screws here and there;
- a bit rusty strings out of the box.

The list of pros is quite amazing for the price you pay, and I could address most of the list of cons with a bit of effort. In something like 5 hours of work, I did the following:

- I replaced the bridge and its posts with a Gotoh GE103B-T C kit (33¤ at Thomann);
- I applied Loctite to all screws around the body (cavity covers, strap pins, pick-up rings) and tightened them;
- I replaced the thin plastic washers under the strap pins with thicker rubber ones;
- For my personal aesthetics preferences, I replaced the switch plate (the "RHYTHM/TREBBLE" one) with a finer looking Gibson spare (4,88¤) and the bulky hexagonal securing nut of the switch with a leaner round and dented one;
- I filed down the protruding molding flash from plastics like the pick-up rings and the jack socket cover;
- I filed the edges of the trussrod cover to an angle so that the 3-ply structure (black-white-black) became apparent to look much nicer;
- I very lightly wet-sanded the entire fretboard smooth with lemon oil and 600grit sandpaper, debuffed with 1000grit steelwool and soaked in lemon oil overnight;
- Using fret rubber, I polished up all frets to a shiny finish, removing the dull and raspy coating they came with;
- To take full advantage of the beautiful vintage burst around the whole body, I removed the scratchplate and plugged and painted the screwholes to conceal them;
- I restrung with Dean Markley Custom Light 9-46;
- and I set up action, intonation and neck relief.

The end result is such that I must give the guitar a total of five stars no less. With the exception of the tone pots which I did not bother to replace, every item on my cons list was addressed. Now the guitar looks amazing, and even more importantly it plays unbelievably smoothly and well. From a playability and smoothness aspect it is actually perfectly on a par with my original Gibson Les Paul Standard (how ridiculous is that!!!), and comfort-wise it is even better because of the less bulky and more accessible neck joint. The pick-ups have less bite and edge than today's Burstbuckers but they still do a very decent job capturing the vintage alnico humbucker feel.

Overall:

- If you're a beginner, this is a very good choice to start with.

- If you're a more advanced player, it's an equally good choice. Just make sure you polish the frets and sand the fretboard nice and silky, and you'll get the axe to an unbeatable level of smoothness and comfort, perfectly fit for practice, studio and stage use.

- And if you're passionate, this is the perfect beautiful guitar to upgrade into a monster. If you do nothing else but the mods I made, you will still have spent less than 200¤ in total, and what you'll get is a guitar that looks, feels and plays at least as good as instruments worth six to ten times this price. Honestly, mine easily beats Custom Epiphones any time, and it neither looks, nor feels cheap even if I compare it to a Gibson.

With such value for money, buying a setneck mahogany Harley Benton SC is just a no-brainer! Everybody should go for it!