Harley Benton has expanded its semi-hollow range with a pair of bass guitars and one very cool (and surprisingly yet unsurprisingly) cheap electric guitar that all call to mind the classic instruments played by ‘60s icon Jack Casady and the late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell.
The trio comprises the HB-50 bass guitars in Vintage Orange and Vintage Cherry, and the HB-35Plus Tremolo, which arrives in a very cool shade of Olive Drab and complements its double-humbucker setup with a Bigsby-style vibrato unit.
Okay, the name on the headstock is different and this is no US-made electric guitar, but the HB-35Plus Tremolo nonetheless does well to translate the aesthetic of Cornell’s legendary ES-335 to a beginner model. And it can’t just be us who looks at the HB-50 and thinks of Jack Casady’s long association with Epiphone.
All of these fresh new semi-hollows share a broadly similar build, with a stylistic nod to the Gibson ES archetype. Harley Benton has used Canadian maple for their arch-topped bodies, with a block of okoume in place to nix feedback and boost sustain.
We have got Canadian maple once more for the neck, which is glued to the body. The HB-50 basses have single-ply cream binding on body and fingerboard, while the HB-35Plus Tremolo has multi-ply binding on the top of the body, single ply on the bottom and fingerboard.
Knurled metal volume and tone controls are present and correct on the HB-50s, while the HB-35Plus Tremolo has the familiar dual volume and dual tone control configuration, with a three-way switch to select between the Roswell LAF-N and LAF-B Alnico V humbuckers at the neck and bridge positions.
With a designation like “LAF”, Harley Benton is giving the game away here; these humbuckers are voiced old-school, and in particular they are surely inspired by the Holy Grail of all vintage pickups, the ‘Patent Applied For’ PAF that was designed by Gibson’s Seth Lover in 1955.
The HB-50s both offer a more straightforward drive with a single Artec MMC4 Vintage Alnico V humbucker. Again, these should give you a time machine tone. Think plummy warmth and roundness, the sort of low-end that works a treat on soul records but also adds some muscularity to rock.
Harley Benton has used amaranth for the HB-50 basses and laurel for the HB-35Plus Tremolo, and you’ll find dot inlays on the former, block inlays on the latter.
But the pièce de résistance on the HB-35Plus Tremolo’s build is the B5 vibrato, which offers players Bigsby-like flutter and is a cool piece of hardware on a Harley Benton guitar at this price point.
Speaking of which, the HB-35Plus Tremolo is priced £254/$278, while the HB-50 basses will set you back £203/$222, and these all exclusively available via Thomann. For more details, head over to Harley Benton.
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