Harley Benton ST-80FR HH Holographic

I ordered this guitar almost as soon as it came out. It is one of the best looking guitars I have owned and it would be a good guitar if it wasn't for some design and quality control issues. Even with these issues I found it difficult to return, the finish is spectacular. But ultimately the quality wasn't there.

I received the guitar with a damaged volume knob and what appeared to be playwear, scratches consistent with playing. The setup was no setup whatsoever, played horribly out of the box so I wonder if it was even plugged in and checked out? The guitar is made in China which may account for some of the quality issues.

The pickups sound good. No coil splitting or anything. I would however personally leave the tone knob out of the design. The single Humbucker version has no tone, people are not buying this to use that tone knob.

Body shape and finish is very nice. The rosewood was a letdown visually, ebony or maple would be better plus the inlays are very ugly, they don't look good on an 80s shredder. Very yellow and underwhelming.

The neck is way too thick. The asymmetrical shape also make it very uncomfortable. Strings were very stiff being 10s.

The floyd trem arm makes a lot of noise, not sure if it is the design or if this one was faulty, but it rattles a lot. The bridge was mounted in the incorrect spot, too far to the bass side, leaving less space on the fretboard for the the low E leading me to the biggest flaw.

The semi-hemispherical frets, or rounded frets. They do not cover the fretboard and are inconsistent in length. They were not fully seated and I had buzzing and the strings pop off the fretboard while playing since the string spacing is wide but the design doesn't give you room for any error having the bridge in the wrong place does not help. On a budget guitar I think it would be better putting regular ss frets in here and not do the rounded thing, the tolerances on that needs to be better.

A lot looks good spec wise, but if you can't deliver please leave it out in the future and deliver a better product. The rounded fret ends are this guitar's Achilles' heel, I could have fixed everything else, but this guitar needs a re-fret. Unfortunately I see all the ST models have these frets, and I had my eyes on a few. Unless they go back to the regular ended stainless frets I can not recommend this guitar to anybody.

It does look nice.