Harley Benton ST-70 Black Paisley

For the price the guitar is good, my expectations were sadly a bit higher than for the average Harley Benton as it was part of the deluxe series, which is why I'm a tad disappointed by it.

Let's start with the bad parts.

Pretty much all of my complaints are mechanically- in particular the trem system is mounted at an angle (I doubt it's intentional, so it's probably few examples that are affected) which was not obvious until I opened the back guard to adjust the tremolo tension, normally the trem is totally perpendicular to the routing- in my example it's not, one side of the tremblock hits the wood way before the otherside, from the frontside this is not as obvious- but if you know about the issue you can certainly see it when comparing the distance between the pickguard and the trem mounting screws.
This is most likely fixable with a bit of work, but it was something of a let down- especially as it passed thomanns QC, I did not however fill any complaints or return the guitar as I didn't notice this until very late in my setup process and I unfortunately already replaced strings etc. But the unfortunate side effect of this is that the low E string is pretty much impossible to intonate to perfection, for a complete beginner this may not be something you really care about, I'm quite sensitive to bad tuning though.

Which interestingly enough leads to my other observation- this is one of the few Harley Bentons I own that had a well cut nut out of the box, additionally (or rather as a consequence) this guitar stays very well in tune.

Finishwise- No significant complaints, my example is pretty much perfect when it comes to the body- on the neck around the third fret, there is a very tiny area where no clear coat laqour been applied (or it chipped away of unknown reasons), very easy to fix but that's about the only cosmetic imperfection I've noticed.

Electronics- I think this guitar both sounds and plays very well for it's price, maybe the shielding could be improved slightly- if I want to nitpick, but really it's totally acceptable out of the box.

Overall feel, it feels and sounds very much like the guitar it reassembles, the paisley is quite beautiful.

Overall I would say go for it, as with all Harley Bentons expect to perform some initial setup, I don't know if it's the transportation or if Thomanns setup is limited to tuning the strings, verify microphone functionality etc, it does not appear to cover intonation (and based on other guitars not cosmetics either).

Then again it's cheap considering for what it gets you, I would recommend this guitar- as long as you're fully aware of the fact that no you won't get a guitar that rivals those that cost 10x more as many youtube reviewers gives you the impression of, however compared to other brands- and in this particular case squier- I think it's quite safe to claim it's definately more value for your money than an squier would give you. (I don't have experience of the affinity series though but then again those are more expensive than this guitar).

So final word- all in all it's a good beautiful guitar for it's price.

Helt fantastisk gitarr med HSS upplägg vilket gör att den är mångsidig och kul att använda.
+ Mångsidig
+ Fin kvalitet
+ Låter bra
+ Fantastiskt snygg
- Min hade lite vassa band som jag fick fila ned (januari).
- Tung, men anade det så jag beställde ett brett vadderat band på en gång.

Varför köpa en dyrare gitarr som hobbymusiker, jag fattar inte det?

Köpte denna gitarr till min far. Som första gitarr är den otroligt mångsidig pga hss-konfigurationen. Gitarren är skön att spela på. Bra svaj.
Gitarren var ok justerad vid leverans men det gick att få bättre.
Ljudet är en aning dovt på alla micklägen. Split-ljudet på humbuckern var nästan oanvändbart. Lät för svagt och tunnt.
Kan rekommendera denna till alla som vill ha en bra hss-strata.