Harley Benton ST-57DG Black Tribute

At first I was happy with the delivery. At first glance, beauty. The guitar has weight. The guitar neck is elegant, satin and lightly tinted. It is pleasant and comfortable to the touch, straight as a bayonet. The frets of the guitar do not bite, wide, aesthetic. Kluson style machine heads are beyond praise. Nut TUSQ XL, although it does not have a label. The strings lie deep in the nut, but the top can be removed. Nut is set well.
There are no large gaps anywhere, everything is fitted. Still, a little tuning of the string height is needed. The pickups are a little high, but this is subjective.
It is not clear, but the edges of the pickguard do not have a chamfer. Will have to change.
The tremolo system is successful.
Potentiometers are good. 5-Way toggle switch is not heard.
In general, the body and neck of the guitar without flaws.
Sound like a stratocaster can’t be said anymore. It's good.
Harley Benton ST-57DG Black Tribute is no worse than Squire, and in some places even nicer.
In the end, I was pleasantly surprised by the products of Harley Benton. I also bought a JB 75 bass, this will be written in another place. But also satisfied. I can advise friends.

Let me first say I returned this guitar for mainly one reason; the fretboard radius is more like 14". I love my strats with 9,5"-10,5" radius so I couldn't really play this guitar the way I can. The neck is simply too flat and wide. I couldn't really place my thumb over the neck and I have massive size 10 hands

Apart from that this guitar cannot get anything else but a 5 star review. Value for money is unbelievable. Sure the pots are a bit cheap as is the switch, but they work great. Pickups are very good too. Hardware is also surprisingly good. The frets were all in place, no sharp edges. Sure they need a good polish but that's it. The sound of the guitar is that of a typical strat. This guitar is at the same level as the top of the line Squiers or even cheap Mexico strats. Needles to say they cost 3x more. If you're looking for a budget vintage spec'd black strat you won't be disappointed. Keep in mind the radius though, some may like it, unfortunately I don't.

Also great support from Thomman staff, no problems returning the guitar. I have since ordered another guitar with a smaller radius and ash body for more "twang".

The overall fit and finish is easily as good and in some cases better than many Strat type guitars at higher price point, there were no high frets, no fret sprout and no sharp edges at the ends of the frets and the body seems to be a bit thicker than usual on low end Strats. The guitar arrived set up pretty well though I lowered the action to personal taste, only small niggle was that the e,b and g strings were badly corroded and tonally dead, no big deal but I should've ordered new strings with the guitar, once new strings were fitted the guitar held tune very well even with light trem use, out of interest, unlike the usual for Strat type guitars the bridge is not set floating, it is flat against the body so the trem only works one way, not an issue for me . For personal taste I will probably swap out the pick ups and up grade the electrics. Overall a very good guitar for the money, punches well above its' weight.

I always wanted a DG S type, but could not afford custom shop money. This is a nice alternative. It came setup decent, but I made some adjustments. The trussrod had too much relief, so I tightened it a bit. I was surprised at how good the frets were. No sharp edges and nicely polished. The pickups sound good, so no need to change them. The electronics work fine. The body is supposed to be ash and I guess it is, but a light ash. There is not much weight to the body. the pickguard had a couple of stripped screws and when I removed the screws to look underneath alot of wood particles fell out of the holes and a couple more were stripped. I will have to fix that. Tuners work good, but the trem arm is very loose, so I replaced it with a short DG arm which fit perfectly. It also adds to the look. The bridge came fixed to the body, so I had to put a lot of work into getting it to float properly. The pickguard was mounted a little off and has pits in the plastic, but I am glad to see they got rid of the white stripe. The trem cover on the back was installed crooked and blocks the holes in the bridge when changing strings. I put GFS boomers on it and really like it now. The next step for Thoman to do would be to give it a more vintage radius if possible, since it is the standard 13 like most Harley Bentons I have seen. I do love it and it turned out real nice! The closest I will get to a DG S type. I like the Harley Benton brand. Good value for the money.

I was shocked to find that this guitar arrived absolutely perfect, no flaws, perfectly setup with a nice low action and decent tone. I love the neck shape and the natural finish of the neck which is a little chunkier than Im used to, but very nice indeed. The pickups are decent, I can get the tones out of them that I want and the tone pots are a little unresponsive until the last 1/4 turn but hey I have had much more expensive guitars that have been not even half as nice as this. The whammy bar is a pain, it doesnt lock into the hole so it can just drop out although I may be missing something here as Ive never had a push in whammy bar.

Overall a really nice guitar that may or may not be upgraded in the future.

This is my first purchase of a Harley Benton and my first purchase from Thomann Music. The fretwork is pretty good out of the box, but I did a fret level and dress, and now it's flawless. The truss rod was super tight and the neck had a significant back bow out of the box. That was an easy fix over the course of a few days to slowly relieve the truss rod tension. Take your time tweaking the guitar and you'll be rewarded. Additionally, the pickups are surprisingly good.

For the price, the guitar is a bargain. If you're on the fence, buy it. You won't regret it. I'm probably going to buy a few more.