Harley Benton SC-450 P90 GT Classic Series

The guitar arrived in good shape. The finish and colour are amazing for this price tag (and my taste) but other than that, there are a few things that need to be "fixed".

Neck is straight and fat which is a bit odd (been used to faster necks) but will eventually get used to it.
The fretboard was dead dry so needed some oil treatment but the blackwood looks pretty cool.
Frets needed polishing since bending the strings is obviously not even close to smooth. They also need levelling in the B and high E strings at 17-19 where there are a few dead spots. Also some buzzing which needs to be reviewed/adjusted I guess.
The guitar is pretty heavy which can be either a good or a bad thing and a matter of personal taste.
Tuners are just OK.
Intonation was interestingly pretty on spot (nice one there).
Pots and switch look really cheap but work OK for now.
Nut has not been cut/finished with care (has remnants of the actual cut and not been sanded at all).

Overall at 166 euros, I don't think you can get something better (not even used) so if you have the knowledge and time to spare to get it properly playing, go for it. If not, you may end up with a guitar that is difficult to play. It's a good basis for experimentation on updates/maintenance and in general, stuff you wouldn't do in more expensive guitars but can also be a great (and stunning) player if you treat her well.

For the price, it sounds amazing. Honestly, for a cheap Les Paul clone I got a great piece of wood, but the setup was unfortunately atrocious. The HB DIY kits were playable out of the box, one took very little work to be supremely playable. Well, after assembly, that is. This? The action was somewhere in the stratosphere and it forced me to stop my practice for the day after around five minutes, that's how bad the setup was. I had to wait a while to recover from the garottes that the setup turned the strings into. The frets were uneven, but fortunately my man sorted that out and after some TLC the guitar could be coaxed into comfortably low action and good playability.

The tuners are a bit janky, but they do hold tune just fine. The frets are a bit pokey and they're not really polished out of the box, so I'll need those ends sorted out sometime but they haven't wounded me so far.

These things being said, I'll go back to what I said at the start - it sounds great for the price, and that honestly caught my attention from the start. It's pretty much going to do what I got it for just fine now (And what I wanted was a guitar with P90s!). On one hand, at this price point you shouldn't be expecting miracles, but AFTER sorting out the uneven frets and atrociously high action the guitar is definitely going to be great. I particularly like the neck joint, as it makes access to upper frets excellent for this type of guitar, beating out my Epiphone in that regard. So it turned out pretty cost-effective, even though it did require some extra investment on top of the price. But then again, at this price point getting those guitars set up is kind of a given. The end result, on the other hand, is usually *not* that good.

So yeah, I'm pretty likely to be using this a bit from now on.

Out the box unplayable! High spots on frets, fret sprout, mutiple gouges in many frets, toggle switch broken on delivery, bridge pickup extremely weak and needs modifying to be raised to match output of neck pickup. The paint job is poorly masked around both sides of the neck joint, not a gold top - more of a dirty yellow with a tiny bit of sparkle. Tuners go stiff then loose and suddenly jump , nut poorly cut. From a preference point of view, the neck is like a bassball bat in girth, some may find this a plus point, I don't. Unless you have the skills to remedy these types of faults then the SC 550 may be a much better choice due to the excellent build quality and best in the business frets. I feel a touch quilty for criticising a guitar which only costs £125, and I may have been unlucky with this one. It had a lot of faults which I doubt is common to all of these models. On the plus side the neck pickup is extremely sweet, hence the 4 stars for sound quality. A bit of a dissapointment after the HB SC550 I bought which is well made, well finished and plays like a dream after a small setup.

It took exactly one week for the guitar to arrive at my doorstep in ireland. The finish is beautiful and perfect with the back and sides looking more brown than they do in the pictures. Strings ere not d'addario as others said they were. Some frets had lifted and could not be pushed back down from 14th fret upwards, very dissapointing how this even passed quality control, after 3 nights of fret leveling, polishing and rewiring for independant volume controls and phase reversal, this guitar has began to play the way id like, the neck pickup is a great sound, the weight is good the neck size is good, its really a good guitar just a shame about those messy frets

Let me start by saying that Thomann fixed the issue within 30 minutes and we came to a good solution for both parties involved.

Now for the review :

COLOR: is a vibrant copper/orange rather than gold. I wish they used the dark orange/amber knobs on these as they would look way better.
SOUND: The pickups sound VERY nice. Way way better than I expected. I read many reviews that the bridge pickup was weak and ugly sounding, however at least on my guitar it sounds very nice and precisely how one would expect a p90 to sound like.

QUALITY and SETUP: This is the worst part about this particular guitar. Frets are completely unpolished and sharp at the ends - I have not seen any budget guitar with a worse fret job than this. The neck is apparently glued from multiple planks and it is splitting at the heel right at the joint.
The bridge is drilled too close to the neck and the intonation screws have to be adjusted at the maximum to come close to being in tune.

The minor things now: There are minor imperfections in the paint - nothing too serious though. Pickguard is sloppily cut and there were still plastic shavings attached. Nut had to be adjusted and filed for the strings to be able to be in tune when fretted. That however, is no big deal either, because I planned to replace the nut in the future anyway.

I did not expect it to be this bad, honestly, considering that I have had only good experience with harley benton guitars so far and even the strat that came in the same shipment is excellent. But then again, props to Thomann, they resolved the issue right away and I am definitely buying from them again.

I have the Harley Benton TE-90QM with Wilkinson P90's and it sounds amazing! These no-name P90's on this Gold Top not that great. Sure one can rock well on them but for some cleaner stuff I want Wilkinson P90's !

The toggle switch on my exemplar is malfunctioning; sometimes it doesnt work on the neck pickups and other times does not work on the bridge pickup ... any who, the toggle switch need replacing and for this reason Im returning this guitar to Thomann.

The lacquer finish is superb! Very classy looking guitar with the Gold Top finish!

All frets need polishing and a few frets need leveling due to some fret buzz.

The nut is slotted well and the bridge and tail piece are just fine.

Tuners could be better!

In my opinion a good guitar for modding!

My SC-450 P90 GT arrived with a nicely finished body, BUT the rest of the workmanship on this guitar was horrific:

1. The nut slots literally looked as though they were cut with a hacksaw.
2. The frets were really rough and needed a polish badly - choking the strings made grinding noise when playing.
3. Neck pickup was so sunk & tilted on one side that a new shim/padding and longer screws had to be installed in order to bring the pickup height to the required level.
4. Control & switch cavities had no shielding, so that was added.

The guitar plays well now, after all the 'setup' that was required.
But I had to buy a new nut ($10), and new tuners ($50) - the stock tuners are really wobbly, new set of strings ($8), and all the other odd bits and tools to complete the guitar rework mentioned above.

Customer service was very helpful at Thomann and made the best of a bad situation, but it this experience really makes me think twice before gambling on yet another Harley Benton.

I follow the hype of hb guitars and try one with specs I didn't have in my collection ( gold top, p90s ).
I know that in this price range you cannot simply have high expectation but I read so many good commends for all hb guitars and wanted to try one.

I receive my guitar and the first that I notice was the dots and scratches underneath the gold finish, you cannot feel it with your hand but is visible enough.
Fret buzz is something you might expect, mine needs fretwork, you simply can't play with so much buzz.
Parts is ok except the pickup selector that is really awful.
I like that knobs respond very well, also I surprised by the neck pickup, it has genuine p90 sound, I can't say good words for bridge pickup, is very bright and need tone control handling constantly.
The Blackwood fretboard is beautiful as it look like ebony wood and it seems to be more 'expensive' in the eye.

So if you want a budget friendly guitar and you can do all the work it needs by yourself its a good choice. But don't have a big expectation, it cannot play out of the box and it has minor issues.
Also if you like light guitar is not for you, mine weights 4.6 kg!!
The price is correct for the guitar and for that reason I choose not to return the guitar back and keep it for project guitar.