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Post by adey on Oct 25, 2018 18:09:29 GMT
Ok so ive been looking at Harley Benton for a while now, as i needed to expand my collection but dont have lots of disposable income. After watching tons of reviews (Mostly Cory Mura and Henning Pauly), I decided on a HB-35 in vintage burst. Well it arrived yesterday and first impressions were great. It looked beautiful and pretty much flawless - not a blemish to be seen!
I start to play it (unplugged) and I notice the the action was really high, Im not overly picky about action, but this was a struggle to play. This was bad enough, but not only that, the guitar buzzed on all strings on every fret! wth?
So i check out the relief of the neck and there wasnt any, it was flat. So, I loosened the truss rod just a little to give the neck some relief. By now the action was in slide-guitar territory. So i lowered the bridge and the bridge bottomed-out before i got the action to a reasonably comfortable level! Bear in mind this was with minimal neck relief. And yes the guitar was still buzzing! So im thinking a fret level is gonna be in order at some point (which i can do myself so not too much of a biggy for me).
I plug the guitar into my modded Marshall Haze 40 and there is no output at all from the bridge pick, nothing. At this point I knew I would have to return it. I played with the neck pup for a while just to see what it was like, and it was a mud machine 😐 Nothing at all like it sounded on youtube reviews.
So, the broken bridge pickup I can accept, maybe a wire got knocked loose during transit. But the playablility (or lack-of) is a real concern to me. Whats also a concern is the prospect of having to spend another £70 for some Irongear pickups. The Wilkinsons sound good on youtube reviews, but these Roswells to me sound like cheap'n'nasty no-namers you'd find on a low-end Epiphone. I know this guitar is cheap but it sounded so good in reviews.
When the replacement arrives, if the playability is decent ill keep it and replace the pups, but if I cant get the action to a decent level, then ill be getting a refund and buying used guitar instead.
To be fair to Thomann, they were great on the phone, very sympathetic and made returning hassle free. And i know the majority of people are happy with their HBs, so ill try to remain somewhat positive.
Anyone here bought a HB recently and felt the pickups lacked compared to the Wilkos?
Cheers
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Post by roberto on Oct 25, 2018 18:56:18 GMT
Anyone here bought a HB recently and felt the pickups lacked compared to the Wilkos? I got 3 HB and they sound very nice especially FLT and LAF. I've tested with different amp and preamp but I setup the height of some of them.For the action, if I understand your post, you must tighten the trussrod no loosened ... if the fingerboard is flat this is the right way to adjust the the neck.
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Oct 25, 2018 19:00:16 GMT
I hated the Wilkinson on my SC-Custom. I'm not in love with the Roswell of the SC-450 Plus (it's a Les Paul copy, what did I expect?) but I find them at least acceptable.
One of the reasons I buy used guitars, including Harley Bentons, is that they must have been good enough not to cause a return in the first place.
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Post by adey on Oct 25, 2018 20:39:43 GMT
if I understand your post, you must tighten the trussrod no loosened ... if the fingerboard is flat this is the right way to adjust the the neck. Traditionally speaking, tightening the truss-rod corrects the forward bow of the neck caused by the tension of the strings, so tightening the TR pulls the neck back straighter. With double action truss rods they can apply a corrective force both ways, so effectivley turning it either way could be called tightening or loosening depending on the forces being applied to the neck either by the strings or the truss rod itself. But either way, i turned the truss-rod in such a way, that it added more forward bow (relief) to the neck. 👍
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Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2018 20:44:20 GMT
I disliked most Roswellpickups all from the ST, TE, FLT, P90 and the only one that made me smile was the LAF humbucker which is a big deal for me as I don't really like humbucker sound. I buy new pickups of my choosing and even mod for better wiring/switching options! I have been buying HB's since ... 2014 and have had received both great keepers and various shades of Lemons Im still with Thomann ONLY because they have a great customer care/service. Just return and re-order. p.s. do a research on the fretboard material for that particular model, called "Blackwood" ! I had one guitar with such and will NEVER again go for it, like NEVER ... but not to scare you, some think that soft Pine is a fantastic material to hold steel wire in place!
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dtjesus
Harley Benton Club Junior Member
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Post by dtjesus on Oct 26, 2018 0:50:08 GMT
Sounds like your guitar required a full proper setup. Not sure which location you are at, but when my HB's arrived in super dry Western Canada all the way from across the ocean on probably a ship, it took them a few days to acclimatize to the dry weather, the fretboards shrunk as usual with protruding sharp fret ends. Which was to be expected. Setup was not easy.
As for the bridge pickup not working, it was probably just a wire that came off loose from the solder joint. I can however comment on the Roswell LAF pickups. The neck is wound to 9K and Bridge is 16K. These are very hot overwound pickups and hence the very muddy neck pickup. They do behave differently in different guitars though. While the neck is tolerable in my SC-450plus which is a bright/midrangey guitar to begin with, the same pickup is a total mud swamp in my SC Custom VB, which is a very dark sounding guitar.
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Post by adey on Oct 26, 2018 12:08:17 GMT
I dont understand why people who make budget pickups wind them so hot? Especially when they are sold as 'vintage' style. As far as I can tell, most people want that 'classic' sound from their pickups, so surely it would be better (and cheaper) to wind them more conservatively? I dont get it.
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1,773 posts
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Post by MartinB on Oct 26, 2018 12:16:57 GMT
I dont understand why people who make budget pickups wind them so hot? Especially when they are sold as 'vintage' style. As far as I can tell, most people want that 'classic' sound from their pickups, so surely it would be better (and cheaper) to wind them more conservatively? I dont get it. It’s down to the cheapness of ceramics and thinner wire imo.
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Oct 26, 2018 12:48:19 GMT
Reading this, I realise the HB-35 Plus has the same AlNiCo Roswell pick-ups as the SC-450 Plus, which replaced Wilkinson earlier but the HB-35 has unspecified "Vintage Style Humbucker" which are then likely ceramic.
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3,968 posts
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Post by salteedog on Oct 26, 2018 13:33:02 GMT
The old (Wilkinson era) HB-35 has Ceramic pickups. But they are pretty good sounding ones in my opinion.
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Oct 26, 2018 13:48:26 GMT
The old (Wilkinson era) HB-35 has Ceramic pickups. But they are pretty good sounding ones in my opinion. I think we need to distance ourselves from saying that pick-ups sound good or bad. Unless dealing with the cheapest junk found in guitars sold at absolute rock bottom price, all we are saying is that we don't like them and that carries no usable meaning to anyone else. I disliked the Wilkinson humbuckers in my SC-Custom because I found them dull, limited to mid range with no treble whatsoever. They didn't convey the sound of a guitar string being picked. I hear enough of that in their Roswell successors to give them a pass. That's not saying very much about them but at least it gives an idea of what bothered me. I like a clear sound and it wasn't there. Now, I'm sure there are other qualities to pick-ups but… no actually I don't think so. Past some consistency over strings all we are discussing is how far the frequency range goes on each side of the spectrum and how deformed it is by the rest of the electronics.
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78 posts
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Post by doktorsteve on Oct 26, 2018 16:08:22 GMT
Hi Leo Thunder, you have no doubt written this somewhere before but could you tell me what you did to improve your SC-Custom? I love the handling on the SC custom but I disliked the hot Wilkinsons. I fitted Alnico 2 Vanson 57s and that improved things a lot but maybe there is still something missing.
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Oct 26, 2018 16:15:16 GMT
I did not improve my SC-Custom, I sold it. Lowering the pick-ups only helped a little, too little. I don't think they were "hot", this can be simply resolved using the volume knobs anyway.
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3,968 posts
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Post by salteedog on Oct 26, 2018 18:37:21 GMT
The old (Wilkinson era) HB-35 has Ceramic pickups. But they are pretty good sounding ones in my opinion. I think we need to distance ourselves from saying that pick-ups sound good or bad. Unless dealing with the cheapest junk found in guitars sold at absolute rock bottom price, all we are saying is that we don't like them and that carries no usable meaning to anyone else. I disliked the Wilkinson humbuckers in my SC-Custom because I found them dull, limited to mid range with no treble whatsoever. They didn't convey the sound of a guitar string being picked. I hear enough of that in their Roswell successors to give them a pass. That's not saying very much about them but at least it gives an idea of what bothered me. I like a clear sound and it wasn't there. Now, I'm sure there are other qualities to pick-ups but… no actually I don't think so. Past some consistency over strings all we are discussing is how far the frequency range goes on each side of the spectrum and how deformed it is by the rest of the electronics. I agree actually. I like neck humbuckers to be on the dark side. For brightness I have the bridge. For even more brightness I have single coil guitars.
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Post by adey on Oct 26, 2018 18:57:10 GMT
Generally speaking, the percieved quality of pickups is a subjective thing for sure. But ive never heard someone compliment a pickup for being dull, muddy and lacking clarity. So in certain situations, I think an opinion can be quite objective.
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