Harley Benton R-458MN WH Progressive Series

Bought this guitar for a taste of 8 string with the idea of replacing down the road. What I didn't expect was how playable it was out of the box.

Action is great and the 3way switch and knobs feel fairly solid.
Pickup casings are plastic-y and light feeling.
Neck feels amazing, lovely finish though you may need to oil your fretboard as mine was dry (which is to be expected at most price points)
Fretting is decent and the nut fits well, though I did have some roughness on the higher frets so will be giving those a polishing.
Machine heads are definitely something I will be replacing soon, they reflect the price point fairly accurately.

Once I stretched the strings for a few minutes the guitar stayed in tune and has continued to do so.
The pickups are much brighter than I had anticipated (to my delight) and seem to lend themselves to a clean tone. The difference between bridge/split/neck tones aren't a million miles apart which is nice.

Features: 3 STARS
Has only the basics (2 HB, 1 volume and 1 tone knob, no locking tuners etc.)

Sound: 4 STARS Each pickup has a distinct tone and they're hot enough to play anything.

Quality: Build quality was much better than I expected. Great action, decent fretting and alignment seems fine. The fretboard is very dry and some of the higher frets do need polishing.

TOTAL: 5 STARS All these for the price of 158 euro is just insane to me. I wouldn't blink if a 1,000 euro guitar had the same quality control.

A Side note, delivery came in 8 working days and the customer service were fast and helpful when I needed to amend my order. Very light packaging is something to consider.

14th fret onwards were kinda rough for my guitar so you either break it in with the factory strings or polish them just before you install a new set of strings.

Tuning the 8th string F# down to E loses its clarity and definition so you might want to get a thicker gauge than the factory .74 gauge like an .80.
Maybe changing the pickups can also fix this problem but keep in mind it's a 26.5". It remains very snappy if you leave it at F#.

Fastest mod you can do out of the box is to wire the pickups into series.
Here's the color coding:
Red- Hot output
White- coil tap
Black- coil tap
Green+bare- ground

The red wire is soldered together with the white wire on the selector so what you want to do is to remove the white wire. The black wire is also soldered to the back of the pot. Remove it.
Solder white and black together and tape them or use heatshrink tubing. Something better would be buying a metric size(8mm) push-pull potentiometer and solder it there.
US size potentiometers require reaming of the holes to 9.5mm.

To start I messed up my order and ended up with both this model and the fanfret version.

I would say that the overall feel and quality is better than I expected. The knobs and selection switch felt good. Overall the neck feels nice in the hand, I have several 6 string Jackson’s and this felt comfortable to play coming from those. It played good right out of the box, but I would lower the action a little.

Really the only negative thing I have to say is the tuners are not good and tuning stability is an issue, but if you end up liking the guitar it’s an easy inexpensive upgrade. The pickups are also not the best either, they are ok for seeing if you will like playing an 8 string and not having to pay a lot to find out.

Now the difference between the two models in my opinion is, I think the pickups on this model are a little better, but not by much. The biggest difference is obviously the other model has the fanned frets and is multiscale, and you can definitely tell a difference in string tension playing on the smaller strings on this model, they feel tighter in comparison. It feels much more comfortable for me playing the multiscale, but the fanned frets might not be your thing, I really only notice it up on the first few frets and maybe like 19-24. I would say they are both good guitars worth the money if you want to see if an 8 string is right for you. I think if you plan on trying to record or anything like that you would need to upgrade tuners and pickups but other than that plays great and has a very playable neck.

I bought it to try 8 string guitars before i'm buing something expensive. Got my package in two weeks with no damages on finish.
First impression is well made intrument, but you need to tune it and invest some money and time.
Neck is awesome, its very comfortable to play. But heel of the neck was not flat so i placed 0.7mm pick under heel to compensate angle. After this i can adsut height of strings.
Pickups are ok. Out of box bridge pickup was vey noisy, i thought it was bad quality, but as turned out ground cable unsoldered. Don't know its delivery porblem or so it was in the store.
Tuners are cheap and i planned to replace them. Not very responsive and not hold tune well.
Other furniture good don't need to be replaced.
Overall it's good intrument to try 8 strings.

This is a very fun guitar. After seeing its price I said to myself that I must be getting one of these beasts. It's not a perfect guitar from any point of view. What I appreciate is that it came with leveled frets, but I guess that the workers forgot also to polish the frets after (not that a big deal, it is an easy fix). Also mine came with a broken pickup frame. This also was not a big deal as well, and after reporting this issue, I was immediately sent another frame (thanks!).
For anyone who likes the more growling genres of music, I can say that it's quite fun to hit that trembling F# and shake the walls of your house a bit. The price of this instrument is more than appropriate. Do not be afraid of the number of strings, I still get lost on the neck, but it's good to experiment and have fun with it.
Pros:
-it djents (if anyone was wondering)
Cons:
-small build issues (easy to fix mostly)

This is the first 8-string guitar I play, so cannot compare to other 8string guitars.
Here's my experience with this Harley Benton:

PROS
Playability: fretboard is perfectly rectified. Neck is thin and comfortable, you reach the last frets super easily.
Set-up was unexpectedly already PERFECT! Nut slots perfectly dug, amazing low action and still no buzz at all, exact intonation.
Acoustic (unplugged) sound is good.
Solid and steady bridge-saddles and PU selector.
Mechanics are ok.
Light and balanced weight.
Right size/position/angle of screws, bridge, neck, body, pick-ups, truss rod and everything.
Volume and tone pots work well.
No electrical noise at all!
Beauty: compared to Thomann photos, I do like the real one more (seems smaller...).
I tune the 8th string down to E and it plays definite.
Amazing low price for a 8string guitar!

CONS
I have to say pick-ups sound is not wonderful (CLEAN)... BUT: these humbucker pickups come with the two coils connected in PARALLEL (rather than in series), causing a "Duckish" timbre. Since each pick up ends with 4 wires, you can easily rewiring them to coil-split (single coil) or series configuration. I tried and in my opinion timbre is better.

Nut is in ABS plastic, but it works fine.

CONCLUSION
Considering the price (usually two 8string pickups cost more than this guitar), I give 5 stars.
Still you can change pickups, or adjust the tone with multiband or parametric eq.

Last impressions: the average intergap between adiacent string at the nut is less than in normal necks (6.5mm vs 7.2mm). So it's easier to reach 1st and 8th string at the same time, but you have to get used to smaller distances, especially between thinner strings. Maybe a new nut with constant distance between the center of the strings and not between the borders, could be a solution.

Guitar is well built, electronic working good, frets are more or less even and not scratching the palm of left hand. So I made settings of action once and all fine, every single fret reproducing of good clean sound.
The only one thing I changed is nut on the neck, I put on bone nut as the factory one is hollow and did not provided to me proper tuning stability.
Regarding the sound, bridge pickup sounds better to me, clean and chuggy. Neck pickup muddy and reproducing the distorted sound.
I am using it to play different genres: blues, heavy, death metal and of course Meshuggah covers!
In conclusion, I am very happy with this guitar. I am using it as my travel axe and it fully met my expectations on this regard. Can recommend to the beginners and as a travel axe for non pro musician.

After some thicker D'addario strings and a little set up and this thing is heeeaaaavvvyyyy! I absolutely love it. Build quality is amazing for the price point. It's actually well balanced which I thought would be an issue but HB got it right in this one. Pick-ups aren't the best but, they aren't terrible by any means. I put some Black Winters in mine and now it sounds like Hell on Earth! The overall quality is crazy good! The finish is perfect. Everything works just like it should. Frets are really good. No rough edges on mine at all. I have 6 other more expensive guitars (Ibanez, Jackson, Fender, Esp and and HB 5-strig bass!) and this guitar holds it weight against all the others. Incredible ax for the money!!! Might by another one in black I like it so much! Great job HB!!!!