Harley Benton CST-24HB TOL Tobacco Flame

I was a bit apprehensive ordering this. I figured with the additional scope of the inlays on the neck, the rest of the fit and finish would suffer...I was wrong. Frets are nice and level, and polished well. The edges are polished without any sign of damage on the fret board.

The TOL inlay is very well done here, shocking for a guitar of this price point. I don't see any sign of filler or glue. The f holes are just 'ok'. Not completely even and some roughness to one (like an accidental swipe with some tool perhaps) but these are trivial and aren't visible except up close inspection. General finish is 8/10 I'd say.

Wiring is good, and the switch and pots work as expected (no noise turning the pots or cutting off from the switch position)

Intonation is slightly off in the default bridge position with the truss set (neck almost flat). About 5 cents at the 12th fret across the board. That is a good consistency though as you could move the bridge back slightly with the set screws (which are missing). This is something I don't like about wrap around bridges in general is the lack of fine adjustments possible, but for this particular guitar pretty good and correctable.

Random thoughts...

Stays in tune pretty well, but could benefit from better tuners, I think.

Balanced, not neck heavy.

Sound is subjective of course but I think it sounds great and has a lot of versatility with all the coil splitting you can do. Pickups aren't as hot as my EC1000, but is not really a critique, just a difference. Plays pretty well and no string buzzing with the action set typically (kind of middle of the road factory settings).

At the end of the day, you get a lot for your money with this brand, at least from my limited experience. I'll definitely order again.

In general at first glance this appears to be a super fine guitar, but if you look closer you will find some glue residue around the joint of the neck and body. Not much, but enough to pull it down in my mind. The guitar is easy to play and has good but not perfect sound in my opinion. I had to sand a little on the edges of the frets to get these completely smooth with the fretboard, but then it became very super smooth and very good to use. Single coil push / pull function pulls up again. The guitar is semi acoustic and you can practice without an amplifier. It took mee a few weeks before the intonation settled, but it ended 100% at the end. All in all, a good guitar at a reasonable price that I can recommend.

Summary

If you want a good cheap guitar, this is probably one of the best you can get.

About me

I've been playing guitar for a few years now. Apart from the CST-24HB TOL I own a Fender Blacktop HH stratocaster, to which I will be making comparisons in this review. I've also played/tried several other guitars in the past (mostly strats).

Order & Delivery:

Before ordering this guitar, I was torn between the CST-24HB TOL and the Ibanez AS53-TF, so I sent an email to Thomann to ask some questions about the guitars which were not answered by the product page. I did not get a reply to this email, which was a bit of a letdown, but in the end I decided to get the CST-24HB TOL. The delivery of the guitar took about a week, which was fair, considering there was a weekend and a holiday in between. The guitar came really well packed, with the guitar's own box inside another larger box.

Features & Quality

Overall:
This guitar definitely has the looks. If you ever wandered into a guitar shop and realized that all the cool looking guitars cost a fortune, then this is a nice alternative.
Balance:
Due to the hollow body, the guitar is light, but also quite top heavy, which felt different compared to the blacktop which is like a massive chunk of wood.
Color & Design:
The guitar looks good, both up close and at a distance. The tree-of-life inlay doesn't looks as amazing as I thought, but it looks decent.
Scratches & Imperfections:
Nope, not on the one I received.
Headstock:
It doesn't look bad, but I feel like this is the part I like the least, maybe I'm just too accustomed to strats.
Tuners:
In the past I've owned a similarly priced Squier Affinity strat, which had to be tuned often. This is not the case for this guitar, as it seems to hold the tuning alright. It should be noted that I'm not super bothered by the strings being slightly out of tune so I generally don't tune the guitar if it's still more or less correct.
Nut:
Seems a bit cheap compared to the blacktop, but I don't know much about nuts so take that with a grain of salt.
Neck:
The web page says its a c profile neck, I guess it is. It is quite a lot thicker than the blacktop strat, which I think has a modern c profile neck. I can't compare, but I'd also be inclined to say that it's a bit thicker than a normal Fender c profile neck. It's not chunky though.
Fretboard:
Decent, the inlays are fitted well into the fretboard.
Frets:
These feel cheap. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's like the metal feels cheap and prone to decay? There are no sharp frets and they seem to be well leveled. There is no fret buzzing.
Action:
On my blacktop strat, I have the action set really low, so I'd say the action was normal? I plan on lowering it and might update the review if there are problems.
Electronics:
Seem mostly okay, although some things should be noted. One knob was a bit loose and needed to be tightened. The pickup switch feels cheap and wobbles around a bit when moved. The cables and electronics are visible through the f-holes, although it doesn't bother me.
Bridge:
Seems okay.

Sound

The pickups sound good for the price. The coil split works. I often noodle while unplugged, and it has more volume than a normal electric guitar, although it doesn't replace an acoustic.

Pros
Sound is better compared to my 900$ Epiphone Brent Hinds.
Heavy stuff sound a lot better
Clean stuff sounds are a lot lot better.
Really comfortable
Frets are really nice with no rough edges.

Cons
Build quality is not bad but the finishing touches are really bad.
The Holes in the body are really rough.
Inlay is really badly glued. A lot of extra glue. Some parts of the inlay are black and brown for no apparent reason.
The body has many black dots under the lack.
Volume wheel rotates unevenly
Tuners rotate unevenly also

I would give 5 stars if the build quality improves.
Still I really like my first Harley Benton Guitar :)