Harley Benton Nashville-Steel

This guitar is a good little player, but certainly has a few shortcomings with components and build quality.

The battery and output jack plate don't quite fit right. It's simply a matter of the plate being a different radius than the body so it sticks out on the sides. Functionally it's fine, aesthetically it's not good.

The bridge suffers the same problem. They've glued a flat bridge to an arched body. The corners of the bridge are just barely hanging on and will probably fail overtime.

There are a few areas where the binding has some flaws or could simply use more clean up. In the price range you can forgive some finish work, but there are places where the binding simply isn't set quite right or has a noticeable gap.

On the electronics side there's not a lot wrong functionally, but they're just not very good. The piezo pickup is pretty harsh sounding to my ear. This harshness takes over when the blend function is used and is easy to hear when blending even the slightest amount of signal from the piezo. The onboard tuner is a really nice feature, but it jumps around a lot. It'll get the job done, but sometimes takes just a little longer than it should.

It's not all bad things though, like I said it's been a good player for me.

Construction wise the neck is pretty good. It's comfortable, the frets aren't sharp, and it's tuners are smooth. The body looks great overall. With the exception of the few issues mentioned above it's put together pretty well.

For sounds it's pretty easy to get some great warm jazzy sounds from the lipstick pickup. It wakes up with an overdrive and gives you terrific blues tones. If you really go high gain you can get great rock sounds too. This is where it really shines. It won't give you a bunch of sparkle or twang. There are other guitars for that anyway. When I pick this up I always end up playing sounds that make me think dirt, wet, warm... and that's just fine.

I've enjoyed playing this guitar and will continue to do so.

About me: I've been playing guitar for almost 20 years. I am no pro, I play for myself in the comfort of my own home. I play this guitar through a small tube amp with a variety of pedals. I play with a pick and finger style depending on my mood.

Let’s get the bad out of the way first. The flame top is bad, really bad. It’s almost invisible unless in direct sunlight. I wish it was just a normal top. Next, the blend pot is backwards. When pointing at the neck pickup it voiced the piezo and vice versa. Finally, the “lipstick” pickup is clearly a Tele neck pickup in a tube.

The good is that it plays superbly, is well fitted and finished and sounds completely unique. It really is a voice not much else can offer. I like the mix about 70/30 in favour of the piezo through a Fender Twin model on a Helix with bit of reverb. Really lovely and addictive!