Harley Benton CST-24 Paradise Flame

This review is for the previously made in Vietnam model I bought in November 2019. Can't say if the current Indonesian build is similar or as I would imagine better based on the other Indonesian made guitars I use & love. Very keen to try out this new model & see if it's better than the last, because the one I have is awesome & a steal at the price! If you're thinking about it, do it. You can always return it if you don't like it. Thomann is great like that!

Like I said above, it's an awesome guitar for the price. Well worth a look as a beginner or an established player.

Pros:
The price!
Great looking guitar! In some lighting angles it dazzles.
Came reasonably well setup in standard tuning & handled being dropped into C# DADGAD with not too many intonation issues.
Pickups handle some nice cleans & heavy tones through my amp & amp sims in the studio, split sounds good too.
Frets were of a reasonable finish, no cut fingers or other issues.
Comfort cuts & shape of the body are really nice.
Great mod platform but also really fun to riff on as it is.

Cons:
For a guitar in this price range you have to adjust your expectations despite it looking incredible on the website it probably won't come as nice as you see it here. The one I received is a looker don't get me wrong, but not as good as the one pictured. So keep that in mind & you will be very happy when yours arrives.
The overall finish is a bit rough.
Binding is not super neat. Painting on headstock was poorly taped in places. To be expected in some instruments in this price range.
There are a few marks & dust spots in the wood under the finish in 3-4 places. These cosmetic flaws are only obvious if you look really closely.
Frets were good but needed a little polish to play optimally, an easy fix.
Single coil sounds are a bit weak, but sound great with a volume boost in the mix.
Tuners aren't great, you can get by with them but worth looking at a replacement set at some stage.

Overall a solid instrument for the price. One of my favourite guitars despite it being one of my cheapest! Has some cosmetic flaws & needed a little love to get it to my liking but very happy with it. Most new guitars will need a setup to your liking, worth the time if you know how to do it yourself or spend a little extra at your local guitar tech to get it running nicely. As always with a Harley Benton, get your hands on one & see for yourself

Where to start.... There is not a single bad thing I can say about this guitar , but I will go over what I found on unpacking the guitar. First off it arrived here in NZ just a little over a week , customs took a few days because I had duty to pay, but still got the guitar in a good time frame. Right out of the box it was pretty much in tune which tells me someone checked out this guitar at Thomann before it was sent, top marks for that Thomann. The pup's are great for me I love the bite they have and the sound is awesome, they were also set at perfect height and no adjustment was needed. The action was a little high for my taste but it took just a few seconds to adjust it to my liking and retune. The frets are perfectly level and there is no choking or dead spots what so ever and I have the action set pretty low , If I could point to anything at all I would say the frets need a quick polish to make them perfect or I could just play it for a week or two and that would also do the job..... The tuners work OK but at this price point you can't expect perfection and there not perfect but hold the tune and iv'e had no problem with them. The nut is placed and cut perfectly and alignment with the bridge and pickups is spot on all strings pass directly over the center of the pickup ploes ( it bugs the hell out of me when they don't) The binding looks great and I can't report any color blead over that some others have reported. There is no body flaws at all no dings or scratches or any imperfections for that matter, it looks the way a new instrument should. All praise to Thomann for there quality control. I only have 2 other guitars to compare to, one is a 1991 PRS SE EG which is a really nice guitar and my goto for pretty much all my playing , the other is a fender strat made in the USA that cost $3500 that I never play because it is crap and does not feel right ...at least to me ...... This Harley Benton is far better and more playable in every way...... Price is NOT a good indication of if the instrument is a good one (I learned that the hard way) I would definately recommend a harley benton to any guitarist and for this kind of money you would be an idiot not to at least try one, sure you might have to do some minor work to make it your own and get the setup you like but you have to do that with every guitar....... all I can say is go for it and buy one today.

It is a bang for the buck instrument, without a doubt. The body looks just stunning, it's got binding, a maple cap, coil splitting and other things that you won't find on any simmilarly priced instruments. There is however a catch...
I bought this as a "disposable" guitar for my studies abroad. When it arrived, i was quite surprised how different the veneer was to the ones on the photos. It was a lot darker, almost looked like a zebra pattern but nonetheless it was an interesting and appealing finish. Having played for a while, I was pleasantly surprised that the action was quite low, but soon I discovered a strong buzz on the first two frets, which meant that the first fret was lower than the others (which is a serious issue involving a lot of work as it needs to be replaced). Fortunately, Thomann took it back although it was unclear wheter to reapair it or replace it. Later they've sent me a new one which I didn't expect, but hey, as long as it works...
The second guitar had a very different looking veneer (more like the one from the photos) and played a bit different too (probablly better). There were also painting imperfections on the first one, which were now not present. All in all, it is a significantly better instrument and after a quick setup it was ready to go.
Later I had to put some graphite on the nut, as it was not very well cut and one string was going out of tune. After that everything was ok, but the tuning stability is still not the greatest (it might get better in the future, but having played the guitar for over a month I don't give it many chances).
The pickups are very, very bright compared to your standard Les Paul humbuckers which is nice for distorted sounds, but you won't get as much chunk and overall, I think I'll put in an SH4 from my other guitar as I prefer the sound a lot more (which is fine since the pickup costs about half as much as the entire guitar). When coil-split, the neck pickup actually sounds quite nice but the bridge one is a disaster... It's just too bright and bity, not very usable. I suggest you to try to rewire it to use the coil further from the bridge or just disconnect it from the split switch and not use it that way at all.
Speaking of coil splits, you get some pretty nice metal pot knobs on this guitar, which are easy to spin even with swetty fingers but pulling out the coil-split switch is very hard. The knobs are very smooth and slippery when moving up and down and it makes quick coil splitting (something I like to do a lot) almost impossible.
Now let's talk about the wood. The first guitars body was made out of about 3-4 pieces of wood. The second one was made out of two, like any other better-quality guitar. The maple cap is quite weird, It seems to be only about 5mm thick and some of the arch seems to be carved into the mahogany itself.
All in all, its a very nice guitar, very playable, maybe not the best-sounding but very good for the money anyway. What concerns me is the consistency of the craftsmanship. Having had two of these guitars, they felt and looked very different, so hopefully you'll get lucky and get one which looks and plays well. If something is wrong, then I'm sure that Thomann will help you out, so don't worry.

I had some problems with my first HB guitar and had to return it - but this one is staying with me.

Pros:
Looks great.
Stupidly inexpensive.
Sounds good.
And... (almost) everything is straight and level.

Cons:
A couple (well, 4) pretty damn minor cosmetic flaws - which I'm more than happy to live with.
The fretboard is dirty & dry - no big deal there.
And... the action at the first fret is high (i.e. the nut needs adjusting.)

The first fret string height is the only really troubling matter, but it's not out by a huge amount - I have guitars I've paid ten times this amount for and had exactly the same issue with. Lots of players don't ever check the nut end - which is weird because it's easy to do (play first fret both e-strings - both should get an F on your tuner - if the note is high, so is slot in the nut.)

The guitar has been delivered with a decent degree of neck relief, and an entirely playable action (2.5mm at 12th fret I'd say) and there are no buzzing frets. Bends don't choke out and sustain is good. I haven't done a full set-up yet so the intonation is off, but I can't see that offering me any large problems either, so all in all - it's a keeper.

Well done HB - I'll buy more from you in the furture, based on this one.

UPDATE: I found another quite significant cosmetic flaw - dirty brown mark along half the length of neck - all along the binding - it's under the finish so I can't clean it off. If it was on top of the neck and therefore visible to me while I was playing, and not underneath it, this one would be going back too - dropped from 4 stars to 3 - sorry HB. You keep making silly little mistakes that should be getting picked up in Quality Control checks - I didn't order or pay for a B-Stock item, so please don't deliver me one.