Harley Benton Victory Active SBK

Oh boy is this a noise generator.
Whoever was clever enough to paint the tail piece with the black paint which effectively serves as insulator (so grounding is ineffective) should be fired all together with the whole QC team since NOBODY catched it.
Few minutes with sandpaper did the trick (I have removed the paint from the screw and tail piece on the not so visible place) and now the noise is tolerable.
Anyway, for the price it's really good instrument (if I ignore the noise issue).
The fret ends were finished quite good, no hand cutting so far.
Fretboard is quite dry so conditioning was needed.
To everyone who is considering this guitar:
Buy only if you are looking for project guitar to upgrade...This is not "open and play" instrument...not with the grounding issues.

Great value for money this, arrived in about a week to the UK.

Fret ends were absolutely fine on mine, fret tops were a bit scratchy but nothing a quick polish didn't sort out. The fretboard itself was drier than the Sahara so needed a good bit of lemon oil. Neck is very comfy, almost no neck dive when standing too. Pickups aren't the greatest but not bad for the money. No issues with grounding or excess noise on mine, played through several different amps and didn't notice any buzzing so I must have got lucky.

Going to be upgrading the nut and tuners as they seem to be the weakest areas, but all around a really nice axe for the money! Looks totally killer too \m/

I have not experienced the grounding issue that has been discussed on this guitar.
The body and finish is without issues. Tuners are so-so.. Usable, but with very bad feel, gear ratio is not 18:1 like fancy groves, but more like 10:1.
Guitar needed set up, few twists for truss rod, and strings were high.
Biggest issue is fretwork. Fret ends are fine, but whole fretboard needs a lot of polishing of frets, as there is lots of oxidation. Stock strings are trash, and were corroded, but this is to be expected. However, this is all manageable and part of basic setup.
Nonetheless, there is fret buzz on few frets (with normal string height of 1.5mm for high e, and 2mm for low e string measured from 12th fret to the bottom of a string, so nothing crazy low) - with this setup, high strings are choking during bends on few of the higher frets - this means that guitar needs fret leveling badly. If you gonna do it yourself, consider half of the guitar price for basic tools.

Pickups are OK, but I did not find big difference between bridge and neck in terms of sound - I prefer more rounded and thicker sound for the neck pickup. But works for metal I guess.

Edit after few weeks of usage:
I have found out that the truss rod and neck are extremely unstable - after adjusting string height and neck for optimal relief, the next day it moves so much that the strings go out of tune and they are rattling on the first frets. I am not even reinstalling truss rod cover at this point. Everything can be fixed, but this issue not, or it would be economical nonsense. Extreme poor hit and miss QC from Thomann, do not recommend.

Ive seen two videos from Youtubers who i won't mention, after watching both videos about noisy pickups i bought one for myself anyway and running through my ENGL savage 120 with no noise gate there was no extra noise other than the normal distortion hum, noise gate totally clipped it. The neck is wonderful, a nice modern C profile, the pickups themselves do lack a bit of punch however, not the greatest chug hums you can get but still does the job better than most twice its price. The satin finish is fine, very well applied my guitar also had no dings or scratches. The nut is a cheap plastic nut but causes no problems ot at least hasn't yet, same with the tuners. Nothing special yet work just as needed and especially after a good setup and the guitar has time to settle it rocks! Im not saying buy this guitar and im not saying don't buy it. I watched different videos but bought one anyway to see if if have the same problems and have no problems at all. Don't take everything you see or hear on YouTube as gospel. Try it if you like. You can do alot worse with alot more money.

I knew about the problems when I bought it. I can't say the humming problem was an easy fix, but polishing the screw on the bridge did the trick (it was pretty hard to remove the paint, but after that everything was fixed).

After that, I observed that the battery was discharging in fewer than a month (the cable wasn't plugged in), so I have disassembled the output jack to find out the DISASTER: only two cables were present, no grounding. The black cable from the battery was directly connected to the sleeve of the jack, no wonder that the battery was discharging. Also, no ground is present on the guitar.

For a learning (to solder and repair guitars) is a good guitar, if you set it up correctly it sounds great. If you buy it, you will have some work until you make it "perfect". Good that I haven't found problems with the frets.

Without a doubt, this is the best Guitar I own. It's top notch as far as quality and value to what you pay.

Feel: Feels of quality, has some weight to it and the neck and frets are smooth and straight. Feels good both sitting and playing or standing.

Look: I appreciate the V shape and the small shape changes HB made to offset their design to be original. Paint job is nice, solid matte black. neck through design is also appreciated.

Sound: This thing screams. I use amp sims that are very high gain and the sound is awesome. I use the bridge pickup for all my heavy rhythm tones and it has a very nice clarity. The Neck pickup is also very good sounding, sounds great with clean tones as well. Since this is active, my metal chugs have a very good sustain, I will converting all of my guitars over to Active EQ because of this guitar.

Overall: This V style guitar has a great value and sounds and plays as well as other active guitars at a much higher price point. Very happy with my purchase.

AL Arsenault
Vulcanize Music