NGD: Harvey Benson stang
Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 6:04 pm
Look, the MOT PG matches the bubble wrap.
Despite my better judgement, I went and bought another Harvey Benson. I know a lot of people never thought I would, and in fact I still won't give Thomann any money after the way they jerked me around. But this one was used in "great condition", so I thought I'd take a second look. There's no reason to hate on the people making these guitars just because the parent company employs jackweasels.
It arrived today, but lacking its trem arm. Ugh, that should have been noted, GC... It also had a rattle, coming from the trem collet. I wiggled it just using my thumb and forefinger, uh-oh. I gave the collet a turn to see if it just came unscrewed, and it immediately fell into the cavity, so yeah, it (at least) came unscrewed. I'm dealing with a return policy deadline now, so I'm not going to open it up to see what's going on, but I know most of these Jag/JM tremolo arm collets are usually welded in place after being screwed on, so this could be very bad news for this trem (and GC).
Still, since it is here, I decided to check it out further. I plugged in and tuned up. The tuners are not the best. The action is a bit high, whatever. The electronics were a bit noisy, and the tone was rolled all the way down. I found out why when I rolled it up - the 60 cycle noise got a lot worse. This poor thing has a grounding issue. It's just as loud even when both pickups are turned off. So there's something I'd have to fix if I was keeping it, but certainly addressable.
I lowered the action to pretty reasonable, and there is a little neck relief, but now there is a fret buzz above 13 on the 2 low strings, so probably a high fret or 2 to be resolved (by someone else, not me since this is going back). Despite that, it played ok and I'm not going to adjust the pickup heights because I can tell enough anyway.
It has some fret sprout I'm not going to take care of because I'll be returning it.
Bottom line: If the trem arm was there and the trem worked as designed, I probably would have fixed the other issues and kept it for the $149 budget platform it is. The paint is fine and it's not junk, just not worth addressing its issues as is.
It arrived today, but lacking its trem arm. Ugh, that should have been noted, GC... It also had a rattle, coming from the trem collet. I wiggled it just using my thumb and forefinger, uh-oh. I gave the collet a turn to see if it just came unscrewed, and it immediately fell into the cavity, so yeah, it (at least) came unscrewed. I'm dealing with a return policy deadline now, so I'm not going to open it up to see what's going on, but I know most of these Jag/JM tremolo arm collets are usually welded in place after being screwed on, so this could be very bad news for this trem (and GC).
Still, since it is here, I decided to check it out further. I plugged in and tuned up. The tuners are not the best. The action is a bit high, whatever. The electronics were a bit noisy, and the tone was rolled all the way down. I found out why when I rolled it up - the 60 cycle noise got a lot worse. This poor thing has a grounding issue. It's just as loud even when both pickups are turned off. So there's something I'd have to fix if I was keeping it, but certainly addressable.
I lowered the action to pretty reasonable, and there is a little neck relief, but now there is a fret buzz above 13 on the 2 low strings, so probably a high fret or 2 to be resolved (by someone else, not me since this is going back). Despite that, it played ok and I'm not going to adjust the pickup heights because I can tell enough anyway.
It has some fret sprout I'm not going to take care of because I'll be returning it.
Bottom line: If the trem arm was there and the trem worked as designed, I probably would have fixed the other issues and kept it for the $149 budget platform it is. The paint is fine and it's not junk, just not worth addressing its issues as is.
. You have 45 days to return it to GC, so no rush or anything to worry about. The stuff to buy from HB is really the "higher end" stuff like the Fusion models. With their cheapies you basically get what you pay for, a decent mod platform that can be made better if you're willing to sink the money in (not unlike Squier or any other competitors in that price range).