To the page content

Harley Benton ST-20 CA Standard Series

154
Get 90 Days of Guitareo Free with Your Thomann Purchase!

Get 90 Days of Guitareo Free with Your Thomann Purchase!

Elevate your Guitar lesson experience with an exclusive offer from Thomann and Guitareo! When you purchase this guitar during the period from 03.12.2024 to 28.02.2025 you will receive a 90-Days Access for Guitareo free of charge on top. After your order has been shipped you will receive the licence key as well as the Download link send to you automatically by Email. The Guitareo access is non-recurring and ends automatically at the end of the period.

Included in your 90-days free:

  • Expert Lessons: Learn from the world’s greatest guitarists with step-by-step video instruction, workouts, challenges and courses.
  • Practice Tools: Access a variety of tools designed to help you practice smarter, not harder.
  • Thousands of Guitareless Tracks: Play along with your favorite songs, change the tempo, and loop the tricky parts.
  • Community Support: Join a passionate community of guitarists who share your love for music.

Electric Guitar

  • Standard Series
  • Body: Poplar
  • Neck: Maple
  • Fretboard: Roseacer
  • DOT fingerboard inlays
  • Neck profile: Modern C
  • Fretboard radius: 305 mm
  • Scale: 648 mm
  • Nut width: 42 mm
  • 22 Frets
  • Double action truss rod
  • Pickups: 3 ST-style single coils
  • 1 Volume and 2 tone controls
  • 5-Way toggle switch
  • Synchronized tremolo
  • Enclosed tuners
  • Chrome hardware
  • Colour: Candy Apple Red
Available since October 2019
Item number 476666
Sales Unit 1 piece(s)
Colour Red
Body Poplar
Top None
Neck Maple
Fretboard Roseacer
Frets 22
Scale 648 mm
Pickups SSS
Tremolo Vintage
incl. Bag No
incl. Case No
$78
The shipping costs are calculated on the checkout page.
In stock within 1-2 weeks
In stock within 1-2 weeks

This product is expected back in stock soon and can then be shipped immediately.

Standard Delivery Times
1

A classic ST through and through

Front view of the Harley Benton ST-20 CA electric guitar

The Harley Benton ST-20 CA comes in a classic ST shape with a poplar body, adorned with an elegant and simple high-gloss red finish. The guitar's bolt-on maple neck features a fingerboard made of roseacer, a maple wood darkened by heat treatment. Providing a stark contrast, bright dot inlays ensure easy navigation along the neck. Equipped with three single-coil pickups configured in an SSS arrangement, this model delivers the distinctive ST sound, accommodating a variety of music genres from Pop and Blues to Jazz, Rock, and Alternative. And those who wish to experiment with different string gauges and guitar tunings will certainly appreciate the optimised adjustability of the neck curvature via the guitar's double-action truss rod.

Front view of the Harley Benton ST-20 CA electric guitar body with three single coils

Stunning versatility in sound

The Harley Benton ST-20 CA has a master volume knob that governs all three pickups, and its five-way selector switch provides a wide palette of sounds, allowing guitarists to choose between different single coils or blend the sound of adjacent pickups in the neck, middle, and bridge positions. The guitar additionally has two tone controls, allowing independent adjustment of the brightness or darkness of the neck and bridge pickups. The tremolo system of the ST-20 CA is synchronised, meaning the bridge and sustain block move together, and the guitar features a three-ply (white-black-white) pickguard that perfectly accentuates its minimalist aesthetic.

Rear view of the Harley Benton ST-20 CA electric guitar body with tremolo compartment

Perfect for budding lead players

The ST-20 CA is ideal for beginners planning to upgrade to a higher-end model in the future, since its modern C neck profile, 648mm scale length, and 42mm nut width adhere to standard ST model dimensions, so similar guitars from a higher price bracket will feel instantly familiar. The flat 12" fingerboard radius greatly facilitates string bending, while the factory-fitted .009 to .042 string set is light enough to enable beginners to perform vibrato and bending techniques without fatigue. The maple neck and fingerboard produce a particularly assertive tone, ensuring that riffs and solos cut through even dense band mixes, and latter's 22 frets of course provide plenty of room for those first solos to take shape.

Harley Benton headstock made of maple

About Harley Benton

Since 1998, the Harley Benton brand has been catering for the needs of numerous guitarists and bassists. In addition to an extensive range of stringed instruments, Thomann's house brand also offers a wide choice of amplifiers, speakers, effect pedals, and other accessories. In total, the range includes over 1,500 products. Built by established names in the industry, all Harley Benton products combine quality and reliability at attractive and affordable prices. The continuous expansion of the range ensures that Harley Benton always provides new, exciting, and innovative products that keep players perfectly in tune with the musical world, day after day.

Pop, Blues, Jazz, Funk, Rock, and more

The ST-20 CA guitar's bright, crisp sound makes it suitable for crafting catchy Pop melodies as well as funky grooves, while both bluesy double-stops and clean Jazz chords (which require a slightly softer tone) can be optimally served by switching to the middle pickup position. Those seeking lead solo sounds can switch to the neck pickup, and for fatter, distorted Rock riffs, switching back to the bridge pickup is the way to go. This guitar offers remarkable versatility for a budget-friendly entry-level instrument, and its low purchase price makes it a no-brainer for beginners and also for advanced guitarists seeking an affordable second instrument. What is more, it can serve as an excellent base for modding experiments.

154 Customer ratings

4.5 / 5

You have to be logged in to rate products.

Note: To prevent ratings from being based on hearsay, smattering or surreptitious advertising we only allow ratings from real users on our website, who have bought the equipment from us.

After logging in you will also find all items you can rate under rate products in the customer centre.

features

sound

quality

109 Reviews

OH
Good guitar for it's price
Otso Humppa 19.03.2021
Been lucky to play original USA Fender Strat, several Gibson SG, and numerous Epiphones before this guitar. So will try to describe my perception of new to me brand name on example of this guitar.
Pluses of this Harley Benton ST-20 CA Standard Series guitar:
- it looks very bright and beautiful - much more attractive to my taste, than most of begginers level guitars by other manufacturers.
- head, neck, fretboard, deck - are good.

Minuses I've found:
- out of the box completely untuned and no chance any single of 6 strings will give you an octave at 12 fret;
- electronics with tone pot at maximum working like radio receiver - you can hear local radiostation weather report trough your guitar cabinet (funny fact - Harley Benton SC-450 P90 GT Classic Series tuned at the same station. So may be it's just patented, but undocumented, feature from manufacturer?).
- frets ends will bite your hand serious after few minutes of playing. Needed to be shortened for about 1-1,5 mm from both sides of the fretboard and polished after that.

Sound is good.

So my sincere recomendations to manufacturer - keep your instruments looking that good, but improove electronics and finishing of your products a bit. If you'll made this, I'll change rating to 5 stars for sure.
features
sound
quality
6
1
Report

Report

MM
Possibly the best budget strat on the market
Marten M 22.06.2022
To start, a little back story. I've been playing guitar for about 1 year on an acoustic (Yamaha FG800M) and since the beginning, I have been really interested in getting into electric. I was doubting for a while whether I should shell out the extra cash for a Squier Classic Vibe 60s Strat, or if a cheaper alternative was gonna do it. I chose the latter option because I am not huge on cash and was willing to take a gamble quality-wise. I'm saying that because from reviews, the quality has shown to be mixed.

Now as this arrived at my door, I was pleasantly surprised right out of the gate. The guitar simply looks incredible, especially for the price. However, I did notice some problems with the cutting of the pickguard around the hole for the pickup selector switch, but that's just a minor cosmetic issue. The fret ends felt quite nice, none of them were poking out, but a tiny bit on the sharper side, that's an easy fix though. Also, I noticed that the action was a little bit high for my liking (kind of an SRV style action), but thanks to the included tools that was a really easy fix. The intonation was practically dead on, I only had to do a couple of small adjustments. And the truss rod was a little bit too tight, meaning that the neck didn't have enough relief in it, but again, a really easy thing to fix with the included tools.

I will say though that the tremolo system outright sucks, so if you're someone who uses a trem or would like to use one, this is not the guitar for you. It gets out of tune really fast, even with a lubed nut, and the springs on the back are really overtightened to the point that it's hard to loosen them with an ordinary screwdriver. Also speaking of the springs, the screws for the spring claw were screwed in at a really weird angle and I could not figure out what could've gone wrong there. With that all said though, I don't really care about the tremolo system, so for me, that doesn't knock down anything really.

Going to the sound, I found the low-end response to be a bit weird, it got really muddy really fast. That could be fixed though by lowering the side closer to you of the pickups, and when I did that, the guitar started sounding much better already. The pickups sound a bit weird and I can't put my finger on what specifically throws me off about these, but being a 4th position lover, this strat's 4th position doesn't sound like the 4th position I'm used to. Same with the 2nd position too, the in-betweens seem a bit weird. But for the price, I'm pretty sure these are not better than what Squier is putting in their Affinity series, so for 88€ at the time of writing, this thing sounds killer!

All in all, even though I'm knocking a star for each of the subcategories, I've chosen to give this guitar a 5-star overall rating, because for such a low price it can not be beaten. For guys just starting out, I highly recommend it, just beware that the quality on yours might not be as good as it was on mine.

Edit: I'm now into the 6th month of owning this guitar, and some additional issues have cropped up. For one, the switch tip is extremely loose and comes off extremely easily. I was thinking of gluing it on, but since I'm also considering replacing the pickguard on this guy with a pearloid one, this isn't an option. Also as the humidity has decreased significantly due to the winter, the guitar now shows pretty significant fret sprouting. This isn't strictly a Harley Benton issue, as this is the case with most guitars, especially budget ones. Aside from those flaws though, I'm really darn impressed and have gigged around with this guitar with nothing but compliments on its look and sound!
features
sound
quality
5
2
Report

Report

H
Not Bad At All!
Happyme 22.11.2021
When this arrived I was shocked, first of all it looks really nice,, Great paint job candy apple red ,you can’t go wrong,, all I’ve done was tune it up ,the neck feels great no Burs and I didn’t even have to adjust truss rod or Intonation everything was spot on,, for cheap guitar this thing is awesome, Not bad at All!
features
sound
quality
8
0
Report

Report

A
the real deal
AAADave 27.03.2021
the guitar is simply stunning in the CA finish. After a quick tuning out of the box intonation was spot on, but I will probably lower the string height a bit. Guitar is quite a bit heavier(good thing) than I anticipated. For the price the pick ups sound very good through a tube amp. Could it use an upgrade on the tuners and a bigger trem block, hell yes.....but for the price you can afford to upgrade it and have an incredible guitar for under $200. I honestly don't believe one can find a better guitar for the money.
features
sound
quality
5
0
Report

Report

YouTube on this topic