Harley Benton ST-Junior BK Standard Series

I bought this for my 9 year old. He wanted an electric guitar, so when I saw this one, I bought it right away. For this price point, you do expect certain things to be of lesser quality and I'm totally fine with that since I can correct a lot of those issues myself.

My main issue is with tuning instability. The neck is thin and can be moved easily. This creates a bit of wobble in the stability of notes and chords. My son is constantly asking me to re-tune his guitar. The strings should have settled by now, yet the guitar keeps going out of tune very easily.

I'm not a luthier, and this is my unexperienced observation, but seems to me that the way the neck is set into the neck pocket, makes the neck move when slight pressure is applied. Perhaps it should be set in a little further into the body to ensure proper stability.

The pickups sound very good, the proportions of the guitar is perfect for children, and the action can be set low enough for easy playing. Your experience may vary, as quality control may not be to the standard of higher end guitars, but all in all this is a good guitar.

Having purchased a number of Harley Benton guitars and been generally blown away by the quality at their price-point, I was hopeful of another success with this junior guitar I bought for my son. However, I was a little let down by this purchase. The guitar looks good & is well finished but was noticeably detuning during chord changes. Therefore, it required significant changes to its setup in order for it to play correctly, unlike the other models I have purchased (I'm a pretty casual/forgiving player & generally I am very satisfied with how these play out-of-the-box). It plays ok now with the changes, but in hindsight, I probably wished I'd spent a little more on a full-sized HB that he could grow into.

Pros: looks nice
Cons: poor setup out-of-the-box

All in all the guitar is quite nice and sounds ok. It's a good size for kids who wish to play electric guitar.
A few (minor, for me at least) things needed a tweak before it was playable and could be tuned correctly.

A stray ground wire shorted the volume pot, silencing the guitar. A quick re-soldering fixed that.
Also the springs in the bridge needed to be shortened for some of the strings to be intonated correctly.

Actually not at all unhappy with the product, especially when the price is taken into consideration. But compared to other Harley Benton products I've tried this was a tad under par.

My 6 year old son is delighted with his guitar. Ordering from Thomann is so easy and it arrived here (Ireland) within a few days. I ordered the package which includes Amp, lead, plecs etc. Didn't include case so I ordered one which turns out to be for a full size guitar - maybe I should have been more careful!
I couldn't tune the guitar so decided to change the strings, adjust the neck and bridge. The adjustments helped but it goes out of tune very easily. I am hoping that once the new strings settle in a but and with a bit of play, it will improve. The action is very good for such a cheap guitar and I recommend the Amp (Harley Benton) The sound is excellent, each control changes the sound unlike other guitars and Amps. As a starter guitar I am not 100% sure but time will tell.