Harley Benton ST-62MN BK Vintage Series

Hi folks, so just to make my major point very clear : the saddles that come with this guitar are not useable. Others have pointed that out already, but I insist : if you buy this guitar, think in parallel about buying a set of good saddles made from machined metal. You'll find the HB ones for 11 euro here, they seem not bad at least.

The original saddles are made of cheap thin stamped metal sheet and the thread in them holds approx. 1 second (just looking at them is enough, it seems) before it breaks, of course.

This big failure has to cost a lot to Thomann managing all the complaints and returns. But that's their choice, after all.

The neck feels good and is nicely playable. The pickups are basic ceramic and will do for a while. The plastic nut is a weak point however, it plays ok as is today but it won't last very long I fear.

The tuners are low-end copies of vintage Fender tuners, you will upgrade sooner or later.

The major surprise is the sustain, a real pleasure. This thing achieves nearly the sustain of my massive Hagstom super swede, and that is telling.

To conclude for now after a firts glance and a bit playing : all in all a very pleasant surprise for the sound, the neck, the sustain. Prepare for changing the saddles and for a setup, however.

Update 3 weeks later
Folks, first thing I decided to change the nut, replaced with a graph tech because I did'nt want to spend too much time with a bone nut. I can however testify, for having used both, that the latter is the wiser...
Second I discovered the same problem another review had : a huge dead zone (yes, 'zone', not 'note' !) impacting the first 3 strings around the octave. At the time i did not see a proper solution and put the guitar in a corner. Very sad.

Update 1 year later
I decided to do some major intervention on the guitar, since i still wanted a strat-like guitar and had none. As i came to the conclusion that the neck itself was the cause for the dead zone, i decided to take a limited risk and bought a replacement neck from our chinese friends at alibaba for 20 euros. Also, I bought a set of Tonerider pickups (i have very good past experience with them) and a set of Kluson tuners.
To my surprise and delight the new neck really came to my door a few weeks later!
The guitar was now in for a major surgery. The whole operation took a few days of careful work, in particular the new neck need a bit of wood work to adjust; a careful geometry adjustment had to be made, and a good setup as well.
The result surprised me completely. The dead zone, as i hoped, had disappeared! And for the first time, the guitar was indeed playable! The Toneriders are marvelous, as are the new tuners. A completely different instrument that I could really have fun with! And the initial qualities (sustain notably) are still there to my delight!

Conclusion
This guitar should be really viewed as a toy and out of the box, it will not satisfy even beginners. Sad but honest. However, my story demonstrates that there is a way out, and that you may be able to finally get a true instrument if you are willing to pay and to work.

I`ll keep it simple and clear

Neck:
- Out of the box straight neck, nice action, pretty decent intonation, no sharp fret ends
- Rough frets, polished them with fret rubber and now they are smooth and shiny
- Thick neck, like really fat. Not complaining tho
- The finish on the back of the neck restricted hand movement a bit, so I sanded it down to matt with 240 sandpaper - much much better to play.
- Weird sound on D and G string from 12th fret and higher. Sounds like the notes are out of tune with itself and they die out quickly.

Hardware:
- Tuners seemed to be tight and fine, but changed them out to locking ones anyway
- Neck plate had this plastic base thing, got rid of that cuz it kills sustain (atleast so they say)
- The bridge is firmly against the body

Pickups:
- Middle pup is RWRP. So in theory the pickups are hum-canceling on postition 2 and 4.
- Sound is good, twangy and dynamic. Can`t compare with real strats, because I simply don`t know.

Electronics:
- The pots/knobs turn quite densely
- Needs to be shielded with copper tape, buzzes pretty loudly when not touching metal parts (I play with rather high gain)
- CHECK THE GROUND WIRE ON SPRING CLAW. Mine got detached because the claw is aluminium and solder won`t stick to it well. I put the wire between the coils of a bridge spring.
- Checked everything with multimeter. Everything is grounded and work as they should.

Other things:
- neck fits tight into its pocket which is nice
- the sustain is okay
- not plugged in the guitar sounds woody, and somewhat closed.
- the finish is great, pickguard edge has some uneven spots, and the finish on the edges of fretboard has been sanded off, probably in the progress of working with fret ends.

And that`s about it.

I needed a Strat style guitar for some serious modding. Plan was to make me self a Super Tweakable Strat. I got me self a G&L passive treble and bass harness with a 7 way switch option (neck-bridge, neck-middle-bridge).

This guitar did not come without flaws and will immediatelly name them:
there is a transparent patch on the black body. The faactory simply applied too little paint on that spot and it passed QC. No big issue for me but sure will complain about this to Thomann as this should be sold as B-stock.
The frets are very rough! They were leveled and crowned by the factory but no one though of polishing them. I will have to add few hours to fix this.
Some one chipped into the paint at the back of the guitar several times. One can clearly see it was done on purpose. Not sure why but I can live with it since it is at the back (also complained to Thomann about this expecting B-stock price)

These were the bad points, and now the positive :D

The neck feels great! The frets leveled nicely (only need good polishing), no buzzing no sharp edges! Nut well cut (plastic probably). Tuners work well.
The bridge is well placed and is in line with the neck (this was an issue on 2 Harley Benton guitar I bought in the past). I am still to test the tremolo, for now its locked in.

Pickups sound fine but I decided to swap them for Ironstone Silver pickups instead.

The white pickguard looks cheap and I have swapped it for a 4 ply brown tort PG and now it looks awesome :D Maple fretboard, black body, brown tort PG and ivory pickup covers, silver tone/volume knobs! Looks and sounds like a 1000 Eur guitar now!!!