Tag: germany

Review Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series Telecaster

The Harley Benton TE-52 NA Vintage Series Telecaster is a Fender Telecaster “look-a-like” Telecaster guitar and not only a lookalike but also a ‘sound-a-like’. It comes with all the sparse features the original Telecasters had: 3-way switch, tone and volume, 2 single coil pickups (Roswell TEA alnico-5 TE-style). A solid wood (Ash) body. C-profile neck, decent tuners, 21 frets and deluxe chrome hardware.

The guitar comes with with d’Addario .009-.042 strings according to the Thomann website. I do have some doubts about this. I’ll get back to that later on.

Anyway, how’s that for a guitar that will only set you back EUR 139.00??
What can you expect, build and sound wise?

BIRTHDAY PRESENT

As I wrote in the post about the MXL770 mic, I turned 50 the other day and my wife gave me a few very nice presents! Apart from the MXL770 she also gave me (amongst other non-music related gifts) this Harley Benton Telecaster. It had been on my wish-list for some time. But I already have a very decent collection of guitars so I didn’t dare to buy another one 😉 She knew, however, that I wanted a Telecaster. So, .. I got it as a birthday present! This now more-or-less completes my wish-lists as far as guitars is concerned!

 

 

Worship-Guitar

I started to play in a worship band (in Church) last year and I’m using my electro-acoustic Samick guitar for that. However, on stage I noticed I was having feedback issues sometimes – so I have to turn it down too much. I want to use this telecaster instead. An electro-acoustic is, in the setting I’m playing in (Drums, electric bass, electric piano, vocal-group) just not a good choice. Hope the other band members agree.

d’Addario Strings?

I’m having a hard time believing these strings are really d’Addario. Or perhaps a certain type that just don’t feel comfortable to me. On my Gretsch I have a set of d’Addario Nickel Wound (.010-.046’s). They have a different ‘feel’. The ones one this guitar don’t feel slick, they really hurt your fingers when bending or sliding in to a note. So they will be replaced one day soon. I will probably opt for the d’Addario Super Light Plus (.095-.044) because Telecasters aren’t build to have super heavy strings on it but I’m not completely satisfied with these. Anyway – that’s the only “con” as far as I’m concerned. Other than that, it’s a superb guitar for the money!

 

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Harley Benton MM88A SB DeLuxe Bass Guitar (Demo)

 

On may 2017 I did my first review of the Harley Benton MM88A SB DeLuxe and I’ve had it for almost two years now. I still am not a great bass player but I’d like to give a little update on it. I was rehearsing some parts for a new song and thought “why not record this and put it online”. So here it is!

I never posted the first review on this website since it was on the previous “Barking Aunts” website. Click on this link to watch it. As you can see I did improve my bass playing a little 🙂

The Bass-guitar has been used on several studio recordings so far and I’m still very pleased with it! It’s a great, budget friendly, bass guitar and has, apart from the great looks, a nice tone.

It is played here over a ‘party amp’ in this video and I used a backing track for drums created with FXxpansion ECO Drums – a Windows program that also works well on Wine, under Linux, too. I’m really happy it does, since it’s a great drums-program and it was one of the programs I really missed when switching to Linux.

 

 

The audio was recorded using my Sony Cybershot camera – so this setup lacks a lot of low end, but you’ll get the picture I guess.

 

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