Harley Benton TE-90QM HH Trans Blue

Let me start with saying many things said here are copied form my review of the Tans Red version, because these guitars have many things in common.

This guitar costs 179 euros, but looks like a guitar that could easily cost 10 times as much. The finish looks nothing like the picture on Thomann's website. It's actually more green than blue; the perceived color varies, depending on the light. This guitar would look even more great if it would have a matching headstock.

The body has a flawless, seamless binding all over the guitar. I don't know it it's a real binding or just paint, but I couldn't care less. Even the F-holes have the same binding!

I have another semi-hollow guitar, a Höfner, which is as light as a feather and quite loud when played acoustically. This guitar is not lightweight by any means. It actually feels rather heavy, and when you look into the F-holes it's clear why: there's a massive center block in the middle, and the sides of the body are solid wood too.

The lack of a scale prevented me to weigh the guitar. In any case, this is not a flimsy construction, which I appreciate very much.

The 'string-through' system has definitely something to do with the above-average sustain. Just like the Trans Red version this guitars is acoustically just above average, the guitar doesn't 'push much air'. It's enough for practicing though.

The neck is typical for a Telecaster model. It's not as thin as your typical Ibanez shredder, nor as thick as the ones found on a Gibson Les Paul. I think it's just perfect. It's a one-piece neck, so there's no scarf joint. Instead Harley Benton opted for two string trees to get the necessary angle. The string trees are the cheapest you can buy, but they appear to work well.

The neck was perfect out of the box. Not perfect was the position of the bridge, which was 0.5 centimeters closer to the last fret than the Trans Red version. As a result the guitar was impossible to intonate properly. I had to move the bridge slightly, and cut some of saddle springs in half to get it right. Fortunately I like to fix things.

The tuners were a bit stiff at first, but accurate. They loosen up quickly. The nut is well cut for strings up to 010-046. For anything beyond that all bets are off.

The fret board can use some lemon oil or, even better, Dunlop 02 'Deep Conditioner', which will bring back the beautiful rosewood color. In the end I even used a generic 'dark wood conditioner' which made the fret board even darker. Just a matter of taste.

On almost all guitars I own the action was too high for comfort 'out of the box' and this Trans Blue is no exception. Just take your time to adjust the saddles to your own taste and don't forget to keep the radius of the neck in mind.

The sound of the Wilkinson humbuckers comes reasonably close to what you would expect from a Tele, Slightly on the bright side when compared to a Les Paul, and with enough character of its own. Nice.

In short: apart from the misplacement of the bridge it is a keeper. If you are not comfortable doing work on your guitar yourself and the guitar is obviously faulty, just send it back. Thomann will do everything to make you happy.

Well, I play since 1960 and have >25 guitars even now, and yes I have the Tele MIJ and 3 Strats and 9 Les Pauls and everything else X3 ... This is very good guitar and Willkinson pickups are very good. Sore, the neck needs to be played-in, yet after the adjustment of the neck tension and some fine tuning she is so good that I can play her even LIVE, as she is light and sounds great. My Gibson Midtown Custom is better sounding (= same type of quasi-hollow LesPaul rock-blues-quasy-almost-Jazz), yet too heavy and too big, so I will earn at least EUR800.- by selling my Gibson Midtown (but will keep the EUR2400.- Gibson ES-339 custom shop for jazz). If you need a LIGHT quasi-airy-jazzy sounding versatile stage TeLesPaul-caster buy this one for peanuts :-)

Bought it as a "teaching guitar", an inexpensive guitar I could take to the school where I teach and use it with my pupils. For the price, it's more than great.
The neck is a bit chunky for my taste. The finishing has some issues (some paint over binding, some fret ends popping out, catching strings, some irregularities in the fretboard and the sloppy job on the inside of the guitar).
Pickups are good, not much noise even on really high gain, nice sound, tuners are great, keeping the guitar in tune even after some extreme bends and the veneer looks amazing.
For a very low price you get an amazing looking guitar, with binding even in the f-holes, with a very nice top, good pickups and good hardware.

I have the red version of this guitar and decided to also buy the blue. I am very pleased with the product.

Well made, good tonal range and very playable.

As usual Thomann delivered promptly and provided a good service.

As usual there were minor cosmetic flaws, this is just a feature of Harley Bentons. I have a few of their guitars and they are all good value guitars. It's such a shame that they can't go the extra mile to improved the quality of finish. It's never usually a big flaw with the instruments but there is always a small imperfection ( a bit of glue showing in cutouts, small dips in the bodies or necks and little flaws in the paintwork). If I had paid more for these guitars I would have returned them due to the flaws. However, the price paid is reasonable when you consider the overall product.

I needed a guitar that's at least a good back up for gigs where i play 3-5 hours.
I decided at before the first gig that i was going to begin the gig using it instead of the other guitar and long story short, i used it for every single song for the next 5 gigs.

I was playing quite alot of clean songs for the first hour and it handled that very well. Then later I was playing a few very fuzzy songs and i loved it. Then everything from clean to very distorted and it was just great.

This baby has got the looks. Everything about the look and the finish says "higher price tag"

-Tuners are working great.
-I like the neck, although that differs between players.
-The action was perfect
-No fretbuzz anywhere
-I am not a pickup snob.. but they sound just perfect for me.

I also have the "Harley Benton TE-40" and it is lovely to play but the pickup position is weird and i found that it didn't handle distortion well.

Can't say enough great things about this guitar.

So asking a keyboard player to rate a guitar is wrong on all levels, BUT....its been a couple of weeks now and while i am learning it seems easy to play and while I can't believe my fingers won't work while round the wrong way up, i think I'm slowly getting somewhere.

it is a "Gorgeous guitar" just look at it all of my friends who have seen it have commented on it, yes I could have bought a slightly cheaper one but i think i made the right choice....it really looks amazing, great lacquered finish, as i said I'm getting those things on the tips of my fingers (who knew!), So recently I went to a local music shop and saw guitars at a similar price.....check out your local shop as I don't think you'll see anything in the same price point with this quality.

My only complaint is I would love to buy a bass 4 strings should be easier, shouldn't they? but they don't do one in a similar colour.

C'mon Harley Benton....this is a no brain'er.

Very nice looking guitar, but came with a very dry fretboard, corroded strings a very high action and loads of fretbuzz on the 6th string and incorrect intonation.

I have never done any setup work on any guitar (all been good out of the box) and I felt uneasy doing it. However, for this one I figured what the hell - so I went online, took a day full of guitar setup lessons (truss rod adjustment, restringing and lowering string height, fixing intonation - much harder than I thought). It took me a couple of sessions to get it right and I did.

Now this instrument feels and plays nice. Since I am only just done being a beginner, I believe this guitar has added a lot of confidence in my ability to handle a guitar (something we beginners lack) since I set it up (somewhat myself). Overall happy with the purchase, looks slightly different from the photos (more greenish - still pretty good) but I believe that is the case with almost all photos on Thomann. No other comments apart from the fact that its great value for the price - perhaps Thomann could just make sure quality control is tighter - (3.5/5) chances are you could have quality control issues.

Edit: The tuners are not very nice on this one - i wonder if others have had this issue, they skip every now and then.