Harley Benton HB-35Plus Metallic Green

I have 3 Gibson/Epiphone Guitars to compare:
1. A Epiphone LP from 1998
2. A Gibson LP standard from 2007 or 2008 I'd say.
3. A Gibson SG-Special from 2014 (120Y Gibson anversary Edition)
With these as a reference I'm pleased with the HB. First the Stuff I like.
+ It looks nice. It's not a piece of art, but for the price, the Finish and Bindings and all this is fairly good.
+ It plays well. The neck is rather chunky. I bought my SG because it was the one (of 4) with the thinnest neck. The one on the HB is similar. SGs may have even thicker ones but it is more chunky than on my LPs. I like it.
+ The PickUps can both be coil split. which is nice. Also The Single-Coil sound of both is not to bad. I liked the split sound of the neck PU even more than the humbucker sound.
+ The Bridge PU's sound is ok. It almost has an soft out-of-phase like sound in lack of better description. It's labeled treble and that what it is.
- I didn't like the Neck PU. To dull, wooly and not really well defined. Like the tone pot was always full off (It's not broken, it get's even more "Jazz" if I turn it down). Also with distortion it tents to roar (in a bad way). This may be taste but I tried to fix this by screwing around with the screws. First I lowered the whole PU (And than also the Bridge-PU to match Volume again). Than I hoped to give it some clearance by messing around with the pole pieces. Ha! Two of them just slipped through the PU. They where just glued into the hole by the potting wax! Some minus on the quality rating here.Just don't do this. If you don't like the sound, expect to change the PU completely, before trying to adjust. Or expect to wait for replacement, with a broken guitar, like I do now.
- The strap pins are rather thick, on the part where the strap is gonna sit in the end. I swapped them out with some Fender ones, I had laying around. No big deal, but they may wear out the strap and help it slipping of the pin.
- I expect to change the tuners in the near future. But I'm not totally convinced. The may be good enough.
= If you find one which feels good to you and has nice wood and craftsmanship you can absolutely buy one of these. I'd plan some extra 100€-300€ for replacement parts. Then you got a nice guitar for the same money as you get it from e.g. Epiphone. And all the stuff you (maybe) need to change there too is already payed. A good bang for the buck.

I own multiple HB's of varying price ranges, and this is definitely the best one I have purchased yet. Top quality in my eyes, especially given the price. No sharp fret ends, paint job is absolutely fantastic (there's one tiny mark near the "binding" on the bottom horn. You won't see it unless you're absolutely looking for imperfections). I had been eying the Cherry Red HB-35 Plus for a long time, but when I saw the new colors and this amazing Green/Gold I had to get it!

Neck has a good feel. Not thick, not thin either. Electronics sound good for this price range. Some might change the pickups but with a good setup of them (changing height/pole piece height), you can get them to sound very good. Tuners are nice and the guitar stays in tune. They aren't locking but they do their job.

It was mentioned in another review that the pull-knob is difficult to grab: if you pull from the base of the knob and not the stem it is very fluid to activate the coil-taps. Which, by the way, sound excellent!

The versatility of this guitar is very wide (I'm sure you know if you're looking at 335's). From clean jazz/blues to classic rock to rockabilly and beyond. I've even gotten some good doom tones out of this.

There are really no cons that I can see here. The neck was a bit dirty, but at my first string change I just cleaned her up with some Dunlop Lemon oil and used a fret polishing rubber on the frets and all is well. For 250 euros you are getting an outstanding piece of gear here. Setup was great out of the box. I've had guitars 3x this price that required a longer setup. I didn't have to adjust the truss rod, nor the bridge height at all. Minor adjustments to the pickups as mentioned earlier and a bit of intonation changes at the saddles.

I sound like I'm shilling for HB here but in my 20 years of playing guitar I am quite pleasantly surprised with this, and more impressed by HB with each guitar I purchase from them. Highly recommended!

This is my second HB-35. I had the original HB-35 in black with no-name pickups a few years back and regretted selling it.

Thomann kindly put this guitar through an extra inspection for me at no extra cost.

Looks- great (if you like green- I do). The pickguard is the only ugly point, but you can take it off and put the screws back in the holes, which I will do.

Tuners- ok, they are not the most accurate, or responsive. We're spoilt for choice with Harley Benton guitars and the better tuners on my higher end HB make these ones seems lower quality, but in absolute terms they're fine. They work. I will change them at some point.

Nut- plastic but well cut. No string sticking/pinging. Height is good.

Pickups- they're good to my amateur ears. There is a noticeable difference in harshness between neck and bridge. The coil split works but it's an acquired taste.

I thought long and hard between this guitar and the new Aeolus and watched too many youtube reviews. They're slightly different beasts, ultimately while I loved the look of the aeolus and the better hardware, I didn't have the 150 euro extra. I'm not a great player anyway, but made a deal with myself that if I notice an improvement over the next year or two, I'll splash a bit more on the Aeolus or a lower end Gretsch.

The fret ends are very slighty protruding, not sharp but present. They are also a little scratch on bends. Nothing major.

Very much recommended guitar, minor paint blobs etc, but for the money and the sounds I have no complaints.