Harley Benton TE-62CC LH SFG

Je ne suis pas un professionnel, ce n'est pas le premier achat que je fais chez Thomann. Il n'y a pas de mauvaise surprise. Le rapport qualité prix est très très honnête sinon imbattable. J'ai eu juste un petit défaut sur le pickguard (un petit poil dans le vernis) mais sur les 4 guitares achetées, c'est la première fois que j'ai un souci. Sinon les finitions sont excellentes. Le manche est très agréable (il n'accroche pas) , les réglages sont déjà appliqués. Et le délai de livraison top (4 jours ouvrés). Que dire : parfait.

Okay so this is my first Harley Benton guitar, years of seeing them on YouTube and I finally decided to give one a shot and I am really glad I did.
I wanted a left handed tele for ages and this one blew me away for the price.

PRO's
1: Built quality on the unit I received was top notch, feels like a much more premium instrument then the €159 price would suggest. If you had a blindfold on you would think just by feel its a far more pricey unit then it is which is a credit to Harley Benton.

2: Neck and fretwork is great and feels and plays beautifully. No rough edges or dead frets. The intonation needed a bit of adjustment but that is common and took 5 minutes, the truss rod was fine and didnt need any adjustment.

3: Finish is lovely and the seafoam green is a nice colour and there were no imperfections in the paint work or body on the guitar I got. Pickguard and fit and finish was perfect for such an affordable guitar.

CONS:
1: Tuners are not the best, the usual G string issues and this is after I restrung the instrument with my preferred gauge strings. Its far from terrible but definitely an upgrade I will be making soon. For this price though I think you have to make sacrifices and if its on replaceable parts then I am fine with that. (I own a Les Paul Custom that doesnt stay in tune and it was more than €159 ha ha).

2: Hardware is also cheaper feeling but again perfect useable, the volume/tone pots and selector switch are fine but feel cheap and the switch in particular wouldnt hold up if you were gigging often. Again this was all stuff I expected at this price point.

3: Pickups are fine for clean tones and slight crunchy stuff but dont expect to play your pantera riffs on this guitar, I bought it for playing Police tunes and some Andy Summer's stuff so its fine for that but it doesnt take distortion too well. Again I wasnt expecting to play high gain stuff so Im not disappointed. Bridge pickup is decent but a bit too bright overall and you really need to roll off the tone to like 2-3 to really reduce the harshness of the treble. The neck is a bit muddy or wooly sounding on more higher gain tones but again still useable.

CONCLUSION:
Thoroughly happy with my purchase and any of the downsides are to be expected at this price point and all of them can be fixed/improved with a couple of upgrades but this doesnt stop the guitar from being playable out of the box which is important as a lot of new players will buy these affordable instruments and have a perfectly good guitat to get started on and if they fancy a few improvements they can do that too in time.

First, I gotta tell you, the color is just beautiful. This seafoam green thing looks amazing. I'm in love. For lefties there's never much options to pick from, so this is a blessing. Now, the guitar is very decent. The details, the finish, the frets, the paintjob, I can compare to way more expensive guitars, and this one is even better than others. I don't really like the roasted maple tone, too dark for my taste, but the neck is a masterpiece. Tuners are alright, but I don't quite like the bridge (the size of the bridge is actually bigger than most teles, the screws are weird, and this also modifies the pickguard dimensions). Pickups could be better, and there's obviously some hum, but it's normal with stock teles. At least both pickups have a very nice, versatile sound. It's still very decent. I'd buy this guitar again in a heartbeat if they offer white/cream/yellow/blue with regular maple fretboard. Looking forward to it!