Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series

This guitar rocks. I mean genuinely honestly properly rocks. It's a great sounding, great looking, great playing guitar.

Ostensibly the 52 in the name is because this aims to be close to the spec of a 1952 T-type guitar, in other words the original from which the formula was derived. In that, it succeeds, and does so well.

Obviously, it's vying with many competitors for a place in that crowded market, and despite its low price, it punches well above its weight. You'd need to pretty much add a zero onto the price tag of this guitar before you would see a significant improvement in what you were holding in your hands, and I mean that.

The neck is nice to play, mine came with a reasonable finish to the edges of the frets, and the action was pretty much there. Not sure how Thomann does the setups but this one was good. The strings, which are d'Addario ones (at this price and all!) are well matched to the guitar and felt fresh, recent, and still full of life. The whole combination made this great fun to play straight out of the box. That said, modern guitar players might be a little surprised by the neck itself - it's chunky, but it's supposed to be! This is not a shredding machine, but hey, neither is an original '52.

In terms of build, the transparent finish is pleasant if a little thick, the body is two-piece but with a nice grain, the hardware is good, the knobs are real metal with some weight to them, and the tuners are proper vintage style ones too, which is a nice touch. They aren't branded but they aren't far off what you'd get from a name brand version of the same item. No, they aren't locking tuners but they're not meant to be, neither were the ones on the original '52.

Does it feel like I'm repeating myself a bit here? If so, that's because most of the obvious "complaint points" I could see a typical guitarist coming up with after playing this are simply due to it being faithful to the vintage T-type formula - a simple, no-frills, hard driving twang machine, using components that come close in spec to 1950s technology.

Speaking of twang, the pickups are, perhaps unexpectedly at this price, really good. A warm, bluesy neck pickup, and a gritty, punchy, raw sound at the bridge make for some great choices of tone, and they're spot-on for the money. Proper old-school paired saddles too, which keep that really distinctive pinging bridge tone, unlike many other options at this and several price points above which opt for more modern-player friendly but tone-sacrificing independently intonated saddles. Minus one point because they're not brass, but otherwise everything about the bridge plate and pickups is complaint free and very traditional.

Moving around to the control plate, as mentioned in passing before, the quality "above deck" is good. The switch tip feels nice, the switch itself moves cleanly and firmly, and the knobs are sturdy. The jack socket on the side of the guitar is a plate, not the traditional cup, but this is one modern trait worth rolling with, because, well, it absolutely is an improvement of the one thing that sucks about the original without sacrificing look, feel, or tone. Underneath the control plate, the story is, actually, not bad either. No, you don't get full size potentiometers but there's space for them if you wanted to upgrade later. Otherwise, the soldering and assembly is neat, and the cavity is clean of debris. There's no shielding, but then, the original '52... you know what's coming here.

The pickguard is thick, proper 1-ply, dark black. Only word of warning - it isn't quite the standard size! The control plate is marginally wider than usual, and so the semicircular cutout for it will come up snug on aftermarket guards if that's the direction you go in. Why the control plate isn't exactly standard size, I have no idea. It's a little irritating but not a disaster.

After playing it for several months, mine has exactly two things altered. Firstly, and least obtrusively, the strap buttons. The stock ones are fine but they don't have much taper and they're huge. Really huge. Almost in the region of "you could moor an ocean liner using them as capstans" huge. This meant that some straps didn't "close" as they sat around the base of the buttons since they were just too thick. I swapped them for some vintage replica strap buttons, which have a slightly smaller head and a much more drastic flare, so the strap sits far more securely at the base of the button. Not absolutely necessary, but a personal preference satisfied.

Secondly, and more drastically, I replaced the neck pickup altogether, routing out the body and pickguard to take a vintage type gold-foil, a very different shape and sound to what it replaced. This was not a like-for-like swap to rectify an issue with the stock neck pickup, which was fantastic, rather I bought this guitar intentionally as a platform for this modification. A gold-foil equipped T-type was something I wanted as an option but I didn't want to buy a much more expensive guitar in the first instance to slice up in case I didn't like it. As it stands, this was a better guitar in the first place than the other options anyway!

What am I getting at here? Well, I suppose really it's the versatility of this guitar, particularly the fact that the classic design is easy to upgrade and modify to a player's preferences, as well as its ability to compete in much bigger leagues than its price tag might suggest.

Is it a guitar marketed at beginners? Undoubtedly, and this would be very high on my list of recommendations for a beginner electric player, because it's simple to use, competitively priced, but also a genuinely good option that will last a beginner well beyond where most "starter" guitars can take them.

Does that make it a "beginners guitar"? Not at all, and that's the rub, really. If you are an intermediate or even advanced guitar player looking to scratch that T-style itch, this should be choice number one. Actually, it's good enough that for anyone less than a professional touring musician who can afford to add a zero to the price, it could be guitar number one in general too.

Likewise, it's a fantastic serious modding platform. The price is low enough that it leaves a lot of headroom for other parts in a budget, and what you get in the box is of good enough quality to make those modifications worth doing. Again, an effect of the price for sure, is that you feel confident actually taking on something more major with this guitar than just a like-for-like part swap. Additionally, there's enough modularity in the original formula preserved here to give you options for natural upgrades over time rather than replacing the guitar. For example, you could easily swap out the potentiometers or pickups, even with no prior experience of soldering work (and no better guitar to first get your hands dirty), and see the results of your efforts take shape. The saddles scream out to be swapped for compensated brass ones. This design is one that makes such tasks easy, and although that's not unique to this guitar, the combination of can-do and worth-doing is near unmatched. For not a lot of extra time and money, you could push this guitar even further in the quality stakes. None of this needs doing, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the guitar as-is, but knowing those options are there definitely heightens the appeal.

This guitar then, shines as an example of how far "cheap" or "affordable" guitars have come, and that something great to play and great to hear can be mass produced and available for all. In some ways, that ticks the boxes that the original '50s formula proposed better than anything else.