Harley Benton TE-90QM LH Trans Red

This guitar has got to be the best value ever made, I own 15 guitars ranging from £350 to £1500 and this has blown me away, there is only room for very slight improvements in quality and design in my opinion, my back ground is in cabinet and joinery work and I have made my own guitars from scratch so I have a good idea of the skill and care involved to produce a guitar.
I can’t praise the factory and it’s work force enough for the work they have done to get a guitar like this down to such a small price.
The guitar arrived set up with a good playing action, far better than my Gibson Les Paul was out of the box, but I like a close action so lowered the top nut slots a fraction, removed some neck relief with the truss rod using the supplied Allen key and lowered the bridge saddles slightly, all quite basic stuff, achievable by most people that are good at using tools.
I managed to get the top e to 0.75 at the 12 ( space from top of fret to underside of the string) and 1mm on the bottom E, this is a very close action and It shows the fret board has been very well machined and levelled as I haven’t had to touch the frets as I have no unacceptable fret buzz.
As for the sound, I like the bridge with the tone full and volume backed off a touch for a highest gain setting it sings and the harmonics ring out with a nice almost vocal character, another favourite is both pickups with the tone completely down, this gives a similar sound to M Ks guitar on “ Money for nothing” when using a overdriven setting on your amp.
One thing I do have a slight issue with is the balance, it is slightly neck heavy but not much, but I like the neck angle somewhere between 30 and 40 degrees so I have moved the bottom strap button to about the opposite point as the jack socket, this has helped quite a bit.
Sorry for banging on about this guitar but it deserves a lot of praise, just buy one and have fun.
Cheers Mick
PS The guitar I received is a mirror image of the right hand version which is much nicer than the images shown here, look at the right hand version for the true story!
August 2019, Thomann have changed the pictures of the right hand version to the lefthand version I mentioned above, not sure why but these are not the same as the guitar I received, (Thomann please comment).

You’ve all seen the pictures. Mine arrived in perfect condition. The fit, and finish are NICE. The darkness of the red hides the beautiful quilted top, a little. The neck feels awesome, but looking real close in bright light you can see some sanding scratches from manufacturing. The fretboard is gorgeous! Abalone dots are a very cool touch. Frets are finished nicely, with NO complaints. I lowered the saddles on the awesome bridge about 1/2 a turn, and the action is low. No fret buzz. Maybe I’ll take it lower. The pickups ARE a little different from what I’m used to, but can come up with several pleasant tones. Overall a VERY nice playing/sounding/looking, well constructed guitar. Glad I bought it! Thanks, Thomann.

Unfortunately, I will have to edit my initial 5 star review.

Don’t misunderstand, it is a good guitar for the price but it has some serious flaws I can not ignore anymore.

First off all: I use ‘Dan Erlewine’s - How to make your electric guitar play great’ book for setting up all my guitars and I have done that for 10+ years.

The problems: The nut itself was very tall and the nut slots were not cut deep enough. Not only was the action measured at the first fret way too high, but I had to sand down the top of it too. My previous HB guitar, a JA-60 (Jaguar style) came with a perfect nut both in its height and nut slots. So I was expecting something similar with this guitar, but no. This came worse than the China copies you buy online.

Then we come to the frets: again, the JA-60 came with very even and well seated frets this one is a mess spanning from around the 8th to the 12th fret that is some major problems and the frets needs leveling that, if I don’t do it myself, will cost as much as the guitar cost to fix.

As I said in the previews review too, the volume knob came pushed down hard into the finish and pot. meter so much that about half way it started getting difficult to turn it anymore. I had to take off the knob and seat it higher up, though this was an easy fix it is the principle here and this guitar seems to have been made in a hurry or without serious quality control.

Harley Benton guitars are usually good guitars, but overall I can not recommend the craftmanship that went into building this one. I am sorry, but even for the price, this is unacceptable.

The guitar looks good, sounds good, plays well after a setup but at least mine has major flaws that will cost a lot of money to fix and the question I am left with is… will the guitar simply be worth fixing up to a playable standard?

Not sure I will be getting any more HB, though my JA-60 is now a phenomenal guitar after I set it up I just can’t say the same for this guitar and that is a darn shame.

For what it is worth: when I ordered this it was the last in stock which means it might be one of the first made or the last made of that batch.

Also, the tuners are really not that good. They don’t hold the tuning for any extended amount of time.

I might re-sell this as a beginners guitar and cut my losses.

Look I don't do reviews , I don't do cheap guitars ,,,,both shot down in flames , I've read reviews of these HB guitars and they are always so good when I saw that they had added this to their line I thought I'd try it out , at the worst I'd have a really nice body to build a guitar from and I've seen this guitar before branded as Raven west in the states on eBay and thought it looked good.
As always thomman are a pleasure to deal with and even gave me a partial refund when I pointed out the high price difference between this model and the right hand version.
So unboxing this I was immediately struck by the quality of the body, it's very nice maple top , the binding and general construction is as good as you'll find on a guitar sub £1000 and I couldn't find any fault at all. , the bridge is very solid and quality , the through the body stringing ferrules are all perfectly spaced and in line.
The first play told me that the neck was nice but needed playing in , the frets felt scratchy but a polish sorted that out also the 6th fret was a tad high on the top e causing a bit of fret buzz but 39 seconds with some wet and dry sorted that out , the neck was set up well , nicely cut nut was a little high but the relief was spot on , the fingerboard is lovely , very dark and the dots are ablone or imitation but look lovely , on the whole a very nice thin fast neck after a few hours of playing and esoecially bending strings all up the neck it felt good .
Sound, this is were it scores big time, these wilko p90's well I though I'd put in a pair of Seymour Duncan's or something before it arrived and I'd rip out the pots and rewire with CTS and even prob get a new neck , I'd even been looking on eBay for the replacement bits I thought I'd need but ...
These pups sing man, really nice and I'm a complete fan of these pickups, the pots have gret taper and work properly as so many don't, they are right handed pots but I'm used to that anyway. This guitar sounds so very nice , from mellow jazz to out and out punk you can get the tone you want with this axe.
Set up . Well the intonation was way off out of the box , 5 cents on all strings , the nut was too high but that's a common thing with every guitar, neck relief was good and strung height was ok , I like it lower so anyway I a,ways set up my guitars the way I like them but if your not experienced check out a few you tube vids and go for it .
After fret polish, fingerboard oiling , fret level , nut lowering , pick up adjustment and new strings it plays sounds and feels really nice , at least Mexican fender standard and probibly better , I've got a USA standard tele that I've used live for years that I've hardly picked up since I got this and if your looking for a good all round, great looking and sounding guitar then look no further