Harley Benton R-446 Blood Metallic

The Look
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The guitar has an eye-catching beautiful metallic red finish, like a sexy nail polish. Finish is almost perfect, only very small chips, some tiny scratches. The 'biggest' issue is a line where the body parts meet together (long horizontal line) which onyl can be seen from one special angle.
The neck and body meets perfectly, very precise factory work there.

The neck
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My instrument came with an ugly knot behind the 10th fret, which can be seen only from the backside of the guitar. It even has a crack in the knot. I hope it won't wrench the neck in later years.
I wanted to send the guitar back to the shop, but Thomann offered a generous discount, so I decided to keep the guitar. All in all, I am very satisfied with Thomann's service.
The truss rod and fixed bridge setup works fine, but I wasn't able to achieve a very low string action without buzzing. The 12th fret string height is about 2,2mm, which is average. However, it is still good for a cheap instrument.
Now I don't have buzzing strings or dead notes with 2.2mm height. In some months of use (when the wooden pieces will rest down a bit) I will try to lower more.
Intonation is not perfect on this neck, above the 15th fret it starts to go out of tune (to tell the truth I can't hear it, only tuning machine shows 1-2 segment deviation), but it's still very acceptable even on 5x more expensive instruments, so no problem there at all.
Frets needed to be polished as they had microscopic scrathes and still want to work on them a bit more.
The finish of the neck had some minor scratches near the body joint on mine, only for eyes can it be noticed.
Tuning pegs work okay for the time being, don't need to be changed immediately. They fell cheap, not something good, but okay for home practising or amateur circumstances.
Playing comfort is average, not the thinnest neck I ever played, but it's still comfy. I have small hands, 8-9 size with gloves.
Neck thickness is 20.5mm at the nut, 22,5mm at 12th fret.

Electronics
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- Pickup switching system is the same as Ibanez RG421 ( switching moment gives a tick noise, which is normal for these blade switches. It is not disturbing if you sustain a note and move switch during that.
- Pickups: Artec LPDC200-BK set. Both pickups are splittable, Neck Pickup is 5.2 + 5.2 kOhm (10.4 when in Humbucker mode Pos#1), the Bridge Pickup is 5.4 + 5.4 kOhm (10.8 kOhm when normal serial in Pos#5).
Sound quality is not bad at all, of course it can't be a tonal richness champion for this price and background experience like Artec. They sound a good average dynamics, perfect for a cheap side instrument.
I even had to lower both pickups as they gave too strong signal for clean sounds in Pos#3 (two Hums together). They have a medium output which gives the best flexibility and variability from sensitive soul songs to death metal.
Pos#2 is the neck humbucker half-coils in parallel mode, which is an interestingly nice tone. In this mode the hum is not bucked, it is doubled like the signal strength of just a single coil. So it's a more noisy mode, but still acceptable for the nice sounds.
Pos#4 has a nice Fender-style tone too (when two single coils work together from the two humbuckers), in this case the hum noise is much lower than in pos#2.
- Potis: Volume and Tone potmeters are mini potis, good for some years but will need to be changed when start to crackle. They move a little lazy.
Tone pot doesn't work perfectly, the first 1/3 way doesn't do anything, and most of the darkening happens at the last 1/3 way. The knob of the pot was too close to the body and scratched the front finish of the guitar. I had to lift it a bit.
- The Jack output holds the cable well.
- EMI Shielding is poor. However the plastic cover is shielded from electromagnetic interference, but the nest of the electronics is poorly painted with the black paint. I will cover the nest and pickup nests with copper tape.
- There are a lot of space in the electronics hole, so later you can develop with more potis or switches or active pickup electronics.

The Price:
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Can't be beaten. There are cheaper guitars, but they are much-much worse. This instrument is a good friend for lower stated Ibanez or Jackson guitars. It worths much more than the price, maybe a 2x or 2.5 times.
I am happy with it, as I can't expect a perfect instrument for this price. The imperfections are small. But the price is much smaller. You won't find such a good price to value guitar. I plan to order more from Harley Benton.
The sound is good enough to convince me.
However I listed a bunch of minor 'problems', but those are really just minor. The guitar play well, looks beautiful, sound is good, so.... BUY IT. Strongly recommended for (re)starters or for a garage instrument, maybe eligible for performance on parties as well.

Harley Benton has been lately dropping some bomb instruments.
I have quite a collection of them + other brands that I can easily compare.
This for example its very very similar to the Ibanez RGA42EX-BAM.
Neck its pretty thin. Not as thin as the wizard neck from ibanez, but not much different also. almost identical.
Ultra comfortable at the hand.

PICK UPS: this is where they step up their game. As also an owner of a 446 with floyd rose (previous model) this pick ups are high output and can be felt with a bit of gain. More if you add an overdrive to the amp's gain.
Low response its also there and quite delicious for some chugs, yet the mids are very juicy. very present.
Cleans are very well rounded. This artec pick ups do deliver.
Previous model was not really well rounded and had too much high output, but this ones are the ones

The switch has a very interesting and usefull selction as you can use the bridge in single coil, both as humbucker, both as single coil and obviously bridge and neck alone.
I find the single coil neck reduces the gain on it at the point that using them on a clean channel, dont bring that distorted humbuckerish sound as if the amp its at the limit of breaking the clean tone.

Tuners are beyond usable. I have this guitar tuned to C standard with strings 12 - 60 and so far (of course after stretching them) havent had any major tuning problem. Tuning pegs are responsive at the point that Im not worried on updating them to locking tuners as I thought I would.

Fixed bridge its also a plus. since I have this guitar tuned quite some tones down, I had to intonate the guitar and the screws were really smooth when turning.

I dont know how else to describe this instrument, but a pretty good deal.
I,ve got the red and the pink one just to compare, and although the pink one its VERY pretty, the metallic red had something too appealing.

To add something else, the majority of the fret edges are decently filed by default. just 1 could be better filed, but not even enought to cause discomfort while playing, just there you would notice if you are looking for it. Obviously no dead frets on mine.

This guitar worth everything and more for the price they are asking for it. 100%

The finish is excellent - in fact it is just as good as, if not better, than the finish on my £375 Yamaha TRBX304 Candy Apple Red bass guitar!
I have 3 HB guitars and they are all excellent. The paint finish on this is not perfect, but the only issues are a very small blemish in the paint under the lacquer (but it is just a small dot) and on the back around a couple of the neck bolt holes the paint around the edge is a little rough (but it is on the back so you'll never really see it).
Overall the paint work on the body is stunning. The fret board needs oiling and the frets are a little scratchy, but that is easily and cheaply dealt with. The PU rings are a little warped - I think that the holes in the rings and on the body don't match exactly, but again I think that can be easily resolved.
I think that for a £125 guitar it is amazing.
The rest of the hardware is fine. The setup out of the box was fine but I did need to raise the string height just a little for my preferences.

Overall, it is amazing value for money. I bought it just so I can "throw" it in the back of the car when I go on holiday, or I am staying overnight in a hotel, whilst away on business and not have to worry about damaging it, rather than taking more expensive guitars with me. But actually, it is so nice I will make sure I look after it.


Update: after very little use but great care a small flake of the paint has disappeared in a very noticable place in the body. I'm not sure if I should be unhappy or at this price, just philosophical

Another update: I just got it out of a gig back where it has been sat for about 3 months and it is still in tune. Wow.