Harley Benton ST-20HH Active SBK

I ordered this guitar immediately the day it was announced. It took a while to get it because the UPS first announced that the package was damaged, but then they decided to bring it regardless of that. The only damage was to the three-way switch, which functions perfectly but looks curvy. I did not send the guitar back just because of this small issue, I can live with that and I was super impatient to start playing.

The day before I ordered I went to several guitar stores in Amsterdam and see what options were out there. I was keen on getting a Squier Contemporary Telecaster, which is out of stock for quite some time now everywhere. It is not directly comparable to this guitar anyway. I thought that if I still would like to order that guitar at least I would have an alternative until that time with HB. Quite frankly, I was not expecting this much quality.

It is overall a very fun guitar to play hot metal stuff. I am connecting this one to my Marshall Code 50 and getting the sh.t out of all distorted tones. For now I use the stock strings that came with the guitar, but I am going to switch Not Even Slinky - Ernie Balls to downtune.

I am super happy that I have a metal looking and sounding guitar at this price level. Very good job Thomann!

Ik kocht de gitaar omdat ik eens wilde spelen met actieve pick ups en omdat ze er fantastisch uitziet. De frets zijn mooi afgerond wat in deze prijsklasse niet altijd het geval is. Ze zijn een beetje ruw, wanneer ik de snaren vervang zal ik ze eens polijsten. De bediening van de gitaar is eenvoudig met enkel de volumeknop en pick up selecter.
Qua klank is de output hoog, zoals te verwachten met active pick ups, maar de klank mist wat definitie naar mijn smaak. Natuurlijk zijn er compromissen gemaakt voor dat bedrag. Heb zeker geen spijt van de aankoop en kan de gitaar enkel maar aanbevelen.

Bought this after not playing guitar for around 7 to 8 years, previously owned a number of guitars, but never anything you'd call "expensive". Bought this because the reason I started playing were the signature guitars of a certain man from Slipknot, and the price was very good - why not? Arrived in Croatia in 3 business days.

It amazed me that the overall quality of the guitar is much, much higher than the cheap strat copies of just a few years back. Everything is well set up, there are no build quality issues at all and the guitar looks very great to the eye. Frets are well-polished and the guitar needs just a bit of setting up right from the box. I feel like I got a very well-made instrument, especially considering the cost.

The neck is a bit thicker than I'd like, and the action came a bit high from the factory so I needed to adjust it, but other than that the neck is as strat-like as I remembered. Very easy to play, and looks very nice as well. The strings on it are interesting as well - they're .010-.046 which gives you the opportunity to tune a bit deeper right out of the box. I'd recommend buying a set of thicker strings if you plan on tuning to very low tunings of course.

The pickups are possibly the weakest part of the guitar, but they sound good if you don't go crazy on the gain and volume - probably the first thing that many people will replace, but for the price, I feel like they are much more than you could wish for. They can definitely sound very evil if that's what you're looking for - paired with the Neural DSP Gojira plugin it does sound surprisingly close to the real thing.

The fact that the battery compartment is routed already is a big plus, I feel like this makes me want to work on the guitar and modify it in the future.

In conclusion, it's not on the same level as the guitar it pays tribute to, and of course, it's not a perfect instrument. It is a very capable metal guitar, though, and a great platform for improvement. I also bought a replacement Graphtech Nut and some locking tuners for it - but will wait for these improvements when I change the strings.

All in all - amazing value not just for this price, I'd be happy to even pay 100€ more for it if it had a bit better pickups.