“Left me wishing my first guitar had been this much fun to play”: Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series review

The cost versus quality ratio in the world of electric guitars is really something to behold these days. If you’d told me twenty years ago I could get my hands on a great playing and sounding guitar for less than £150, I’d have taken your arm off.

It was with more than a little scepticism then that I unboxed the Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series, priced at a ridiculously low £144 minus shipping from Thomann. Many cheap guitars promise to deliver all the vintage ‘T’ tones you can twang a string at, but at the sub £150 mark? It'll have to be some performance.

The TE-52 certainly nails the classic looks part, and at first glance the only thing that stands out is that low price point. So can this ultra-cheap instrument really deliver vintage tones and great playability? There's only one way to find out...

Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series review: Features

The TE-52 features an American Ash body, so it’s slightly lighter in weight compared to my Alder-bodied MIM Telecaster . The natural finish isn’t for me to be honest, I prefer my guitars not to look like a kitchen table, but objectively the natural wood on black scratch plate isn’t bad-looking at all. At a glance you’d be forgiven for thinking it isn’t the real thing, there’s really no doubting which guitar it aims to emulate.

The neck is caramelized Maple, which I guess is a lighter form of roasted maple, although it’s unclear what the actual difference is between roasting and caramelizing. The fretboard is glued on, and the folks at Harley Benton have done a fantastic job. I could find no hint of a gap between the fretboard and the neck wood.

21 medium jumbo frets line the neck, with black dots guiding your way. Kluson-style vintage machine heads adorn the headstock, and the shape is only slightly derivative of the design a certain large American guitar manufacturer is fond of enforcing legally.

At the opposite end, we have a classic three-saddle bridge, capable of being set up as string-through or top-loaded. We are missing brass saddles you’d typically find on a vintage-spec T-type guitar, presumably to help keep the cost so incredibly low.

The pickups take on that classic format with the bridge pickup mounted on the bridge plate, while the neck features the usual metal cover. Both are supplied by Harley Benton’s preferred partner in Roswell pickups, and the controls once again see the established lineup of a three-way pickup selector alongside master volume and master tone knobs.

Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series review: Playability

Picking up the guitar to play, plugged in via my HX Stomp, I immediately found the neck to be super comfortable. It’s not a million miles away from my actual Telecaster. The profile is a little slimmer, and the frets feel ever so slightly shorter, but it’s scarily close to a guitar that costs a hell of a lot more.

I found the caramelised maple is nice and smooth in the hand, and it didn’t take me long to get warmed up playing it. It’s set up nicely out of the box, and I didn't feel like I had to make any adjustments to make it more playable. Trying a bunch of my favourite licks, from hybrid-picked chord stabs to hard riffing in drop-D, the TE-52 handled it all admirably.

It’s really hard to believe that it costs so little, though I did find one catch whilst I was initially playing. The tuning machines are pretty inconsistent, sometimes turning them would offer no change in pitch followed by a sudden jump up a semi-tone. This could be to do with the age of the strings, or the way they were wrapped, but I’ve often found this to be the case on lower-priced instruments.

The TE-52 did hold up well to hard playing and string bending however, pointing to a guitar that's very well set up. It's a characteristic of the T-style hardtail design, but no less an impressive feat considering the price point.

Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series review: Sound

The three-saddle bridge setup delivers plenty of that twang you’d expect from this type of guitar, but the TE-52 is nothing if not versatile. The bridge pickup is incredibly bright, requiring some dialling back of the tone knob on a variety of my HX Stomp’s presets which are set up for humbuckers. It’s super aggressive with gain, and a little anaemic for my taste played clean but new guitar players won’t notice these small differences.

The bridge pickup is where I most enjoyed playing this guitar. It’s chunky and full, not as dark as you’d expect from a T-type guitar and adept at a huge variety of genres and playing styles. Whether I was clean-picking spring reverb-soaked Latin licks, fingerpicking classical pieces, or strumming hardcore punk-inspired power chords it delivered an absolutely phenomenal sound, utterly inspiring and addictive.

The middle position is similarly good, dominated by that fullness of the neck pickup but adding in a little high end from the bridge. It sounded awesome with some high-gain riffing via a Friedman BE amp model, not quite getting into metal territory but certainly offering enough chunk for you to get heavy. The pickups are overall pretty low output, but the quality of the T-style guitar design is that it’s versatile enough to handle the majority of playing styles.

The pickups are a little noisy, which is to be expected from single coils and likely a lack of shielding to keep the overall cost down. I also noticed a ground issue on the bridge, possibly due to a cold solder joint or improperly connected ground wire. They’re small issues that detract very little from the guitar overall and are easily remedied if they were to find they really bug you in the long run.

Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series review: Verdict

I still can’t quite believe just how good the Harley Benton TE-52 is. It offers incredible value for your cash, with fantastic playability, a great spec, and most importantly, an inspiring sound.

It left me wishing my first guitar had been this fun to play. It’s not perfect, and at this price I wouldn’t expect it to be, so some small flaws don’t detract hugely from the playing experience. For a beginner guitar or a cheap modding platform, I honestly can’t think of many guitars better than this.

Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series review: Specs

• Price: £144/€169
• Body: Ash
• Neck: Caramelised Maple
• Neck profile: 'C'
• Scale length: 25.5”
• Fingerboard: Caramelised Maple
• Frets: 21
• Hardware: Deluxe Chrome 3-saddle bridge, Kluson-style machine heads
• Electrics: 2x Roswell TEA Alnico-5 TE-style single coils, 3-way pickup selector
• Left-handed: Yes
• Gig bag: No
• Contact: Harley Benton