Harley Benton Extreme 84 Guitar Review

Today we take a look at the Harley Benton Extreme 84. Is it a guitar worth buying or would you be wasting your money?

Harley Benton has been making guitars for a few years for a market mainly outside of the US. Recently they opened an online store on Reverb, that features a selection of their offerings. Their guitars have been very well received as an affordable brand of quality instruments, but is it all hype and clever marketing? Read on for the honest review.

I purchased the Extreme 84, when looking around online for an Explorer type guitar, I came across this one that had a price under $300 with shipping. That seemed like a deal to hard to pass up. A week later I had a box sitting on the porch. The guitar was shipped in a standard guitar box, wrapped and packaged with foam protection, this was housed in a shipping box with brown paper to keep the guitar box from bouncing around.

Opening the box, the guitar upon first look, showed no visible defects in craftsmanship. Included in the box was a cable, and truss rod adjustment wrench. It comes pre strung with a set of D'Addario strings and surprisingly was not far out of tune upon the first strum. Once tuned up I was able to get moving on the fret board. Playing the guitar was easy, I didn't have any difficulty in fretting up an down the neck, string height was comfortable a posed no issues or hang ups. The frets feel smooth and there are no sharp edges when running along the neck. The pickup selection switch functions properly as well as the volume and tone. There was even a 9v battery for the active pickups. The specs of the guitar are as follows:

• Progressive Series

• Body: Okoume

• Neck: Nyatoh

• Fingerboard: Roseacer

• Fingerboard inlays: Dots

• Neck profile: C

• Scale: 628 mm

• Nut width: 43 mm

• Fingerboard radius: 350 mm

• 22 Frets

• 2-Way truss rod

• Pickups: 2 Active HBZ Hi-Gain humbuckers

• 1 Volume control

• 1 Tone control

• Bridge: Tune-O-Matic

• Hardware: Black

• Strings: D'Addarío EXL110, .010 - .046 (article no. #104555#)

• Colour: BlackBlack

As of writing this review I have owned the guitar for 2 weeks now, playing off and on. Fit and finish, there are absolutely no issues. Will this guitar be playable out of the box yes, after a tune of course. Does the guitar hold its tune yes it does. I found that I didn't have to always tune up, even after some hard playing, string bends, and power chord pounding. Electronics function properly, and I can make noise that sometimes sound great, (that's on me though).

Will I need to do a little work on this guitar. Yes, I did find that when fretting along the 5th through 8th frets on the bass E and A that there was a slight buzz. I also found that the intonation is off slightly a little sharp but close at the 12th fret. This by no means would be a deal breaker. Most guitars will need some sort of set up, a local guitar shop should be able to get this kind of work sorted out at a low cost. I will do the work my self, check for neck straightness, verify string height, dress the frets, and adjust the intonation with minor bridge adjustments. These are things that can be expected even with high end guitars. For under $300 shipped, you can't really go wrong. I didn't check any of these when unboxing, I wanted to see right out of the box playability. Yes it does play, I can make music and play along with some of my favorites. If you are just starting the fact is, pretty much any guitar purchased will require set up. The average cost of a set up can be $50-$150 depending on the work.

Would I purchase another Harley Benton Guitar. To keep it short, I absolutely would not hesitate. I'm very happy with this purchase. I enjoy tinkering, and building things along with playing guitar. The work I will do on this model is not difficult nor will it be to time consuming. In the long term I can see changing out the pickups or even the tuning keys. Aside from that I think for someone starting out this would definitely be a solid first guitar that won't break the bank.

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