I FINALLY Play a Harley Benton...Are They REALLY as Good as People Say??

well it only took like seven months to get here but i finally got my hands on harley benton this is the hb 35 plus let's check it out [Applause] so yes we finally have a harley benton on the channel i know you guys have been requesting this for like a really long time and to be fair i did place my order in january and it's now august so it's not for a lack of trying uh this guitar definitely had some twists and turns along the way which we'll talk about in a second but is this guitar worth it is a harley benton worth the hype everybody loves these guitars high quality low cost we're going to look at it in great detail see if the deal is as good as it appears to be yes so as i mentioned this is the harley benton hb 35 plus in this absolutely gorgeous lemon drop finish now before we get into all the specs and tones there's one thing i want to say about tomen now toman is a huge music retailer in europe and pretty much handles all the harley benton stuff now as i mentioned i ordered this guitar in january and a few months later in may i noticed i got charged and a shipping notification so i was like sweet the harley benton is on its way now i'm pretty busy guy and time went by and suddenly i thought what happened to that harley benton i paid for that and i got a shipping notification where's the guitar so i emailed them and i was like uh what happened to the guitar and they're like oh yeah sorry about that we sent it back to germany and sold it to somebody else i was like wait what i paid for this guitar where's the guitar and it turns out they're having trouble getting it to canada uh but instead of like letting me know like sending me an email or calling me or notifying me some way and just saying hey daryl you know we're having trouble getting it to canada we're gonna have to you know try on the next shipment or whatever or maybe just like you know switch shipping providers get it to me somehow but anyway they didn't let me know i had to track them down and then it turned out they sent the guitar back to germany and sold it to somewhere someone else so this is my only experience with tomen and it has not been good now hopefully you know your experience is much better but anyway eventually the guitar came we got it straightened out and they sent it to me so here it is let's dive in and take a closer look at the harley benton hb 35 plus all right so let's quickly hit up some of the highlights of this guitar then we'll do all our tones at the end of the video i'm going to go through it with a fine tooth comb and find out what the construction is like so should be pretty interesting now in terms of the specs what this guitar is we've got a maple neck and a pow ferro fingerboard we've got 22 frets with block inlays and we've got a maple body and the site says we've got a quadruple a flame maple arched top now i mean this guitar is very attractive i'll try to show it off in a few different lights so that you can really you know get a sense of that top but you know maybe a double a flame maple top on a good day so you know for them to say it's a quadruple a flame top is a little bit misleading and you know that's like a prs 10 top or something like this so i mean this is a quadruple a flame top so if you're expecting something like this and your guitar shows up and it's not this um just be forewarned i don't think they should have that on their website i think it's misleading but it does have a flame top just you know pretty modest now as for the rest of the specs we've got the classic stop tail piece two pneumatic bridge and then we've got two al neko 5 roswell pickup so should be interesting to see what those sound like and on this model the hb 35 plus we get coil splits which is not really a common feature on a guitar of this style so you can just pull out your volumes split the coils and get some you know brighter single coil type sounds so we'll test that out in a second but a really nice feature on a guitar especially in this price range and especially you know in this configuration so that's kind of like the rough specs as i said we'll get into all the nitty-gritty after the tones but for now let's plug it in see what it sounds like all right so let's kick things off with the neck humbucker here we go all right so let's split that coil try that same thing really nice sound out of those split [Music] coils [Music] now in the middle position is where those coil splits really become useful offering some pretty cool combinations so let's start with the next split and the full humbucker on at the same time sounds like this now let's flip it so full humbucker in the neck split bridge on at the same time and one of my personal favorites let's split both so both are in their single coils sort of t style i guess let's try that [Music] just such a lively sound love that tone all right so now let's head over to the bridge pickup and play with a touch of dirt [Music] hey [Music] all right let's try that with the split pickup all right so now let's dial in a really warm and full lead tone [Applause] [Applause] [Laughter] let's split that and try that [Applause] so you can definitely hear it doesn't drive the amp into that full distortion you know like the humbucker but it's a really nice choice as well but yeah that humbucker really nice lots of sustain and fullness let's try that in the bridge here split that a little bit more clarity if you wanted to do some more like kind of brighter blue stuff so back to the humbucker [Applause] so some really great tonal options there okay so now let's transition into the overall construction this is obviously really important and there are a few issues but let's start off at the headstock here now i have to say overall the look of this headstock is to me really aesthetically pleasing i think i like the you know the harley benton font i like the little center logo there which is most certainly a sticker but i think it still looks you know really nice and the trash rod cover just the overall shape of the headstock i think is really nice so i think harley benton did a good job there and on this model we get those keystone tuners which i also think you know just really add to the classic look of this guitar now when we look on the back they are unbranded tuners so you're not getting anything like you know world changing in terms of quality but they're serviceable and i like the keystone buttons now when we flip the neck around you can see the headstock tilt back is via a scarf joint right here and because it's a translucent finish you can see it now there's nothing wrong with scarf joints they're tried and true and tested a very strong joint and a good way to get you know headstock tilt back so lots of painted necks will have this as well but here you can just see it because of the finish other than that we've got a one piece maple neck and as i mentioned instead of getting like rosewood or ebony or something like that we get pau ferro which is just slightly lighter in finish but i i still think it looks really nice with the lemon drop and you know it allows them to ship these guitars worldwide so there you go let's take a closer look at some of the other features all right so now let's take a closer look at the frets and here's you know the first real area that really shows off you know this is not a high-end guitar and that has to do with the polishing of the frets if i just take my lapel mic here and just kind of bring it up to the fingerboard and do some bends what you normally would hear on a guitar is almost nothing just a very smooth kind of sound and here's what you hear on the harley benton so i don't know if you guys can hear that just really kind of rough and scrapey now when we look at the fret ends on this guitar i'm just going to attach my mic here you also notice none of the fret ends are polished and there's a lot of tooling marks so i'll show a couple shots from you know down low on the guitar and then when we come up to the higher frets here you really notice it it becomes very apparent so you know a nice little polish on the fret ends and on the fret faces would do wonders for this guitar but like i said those are just some of the issues that kind of show that this is not a high-end guitar even though it looks great and i think it sounds really nice and plays nice there are you know a few issues like that that could be addressed now another cosmetic issue with the neck was there was this weird adhesive all the way down the top binding on this guitar i'll take some shots for you guys just looked kind of gross and i had to kind of scrape it off not something that you know if you buy a guitar you should have to do i mean on the back of the headstock it says quality control past right there and clearly they didn't look very closely because it should have been scraped off or they should have used a different piece of binding or whatever so i had to clean that up again not a huge issue but something you guys might want to know about and other than that like the binding on the body looks really good you know where it meets the neck looks really nice there might be a little filler here there but overall really good and you know better than some other guitars in this price range and i got to say the f holes are cut out really nice too i'll take an overall shot and then maybe something close up i have to just clean out a little bit but you know again in this price range looks really good the only other really issue you know that i could see is you know what you would find on epiphones too sometimes you know where the posts go into the guitar aren't totally flush to the top you know you can just see a little bit of it and it just needs to be seated better now there's no tilting forward or back which is really nice but you know in this price range i guess that can be expected and other than that we've got full-size pots as far as i can tell on this guitar too which is a really nice touch so i think you know quality control is mostly cosmetic kind of stuff a little bit hit and miss so you know just be aware even though harley benton has like a really good reputation for the price um you know it's it's very unlikely that you'll end up with a perfect guitar so you just need to know that so here are my final thoughts on the harley benton number one super happy i got a chance to play this guitar and as you guys know i've also done reviews of the firefly and uh the monoprice versions of this guitar and some of the same issues with the grittiness on the frets the you know the ugly filed fret ends that persists upon each one of those brands so i don't think harley benton you know stands head and shoulders above the others when it comes to that kind of stuff and you know just some of that glooping adhesive that should have been removed by quality control that kind of stuff so i wouldn't say that you know in terms of the the fit and finish that the harley benton is like head and shoulders above those i think where it does stand out is you've got the coil splits which is really nice you get this really nice finish and you know most areas of this guitar are really well made so very happy with it now would i wait another seven months to get one or a different model no i wouldn't i think there are other options you might have to spend you know 50 or 100 bucks more um but the wait times at least for what i experienced was really bad so i wouldn't necessarily wait that long but if you get a chance to try one out or they're in stock i think it's a it's a good buy this is a good solid instrument really fun to play i think it's aesthetically pleasing and yeah really great guitar thanks so much for watching if you guys enjoy demos like this be sure to subscribe to the channel by clicking my face right here rest of my information including t-shirt store tab store and links to the gear i use will all be down in the video description below have yourself a fantastic week

Channel: Darrell Braun Guitar

Views: 895,931

Keywords: gibson les paul, epiphone les paul, gibson es 335 vs les paul, les paul vs es-335 guitar, epiphone les paul vs es 355, gibson es 335 vs les paul standard, les paul standard, les paul vs es-335, darrell braun, darrell braun guitar, gibson vs epiphone les paul, gibson vs epiphone, lucille vs les paul guitar, gibson es 335, firefly, firefly guitar, firefly 338, firefly vs 335, indio boardwalk guitar, indio guitar, harley benton, harley benton hb35, harley benton vs firefly

Id: _hZ_9WtE1Oo

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020