The Harley Benton ST-Modern HH Plus was one of the big NAMM 2025 releases. Here was the much-anticipated S-style, with its hard-tail build, high-output pickups, solid colour finishes and pearloid pickguard, very much calling to mind Tom DeLonge’s sought-after Stratocaster – and best of all this was an electric guitar under $500/£500.
Fast-forward six weeks or so and the budget gear giant has launched a sequel, the ST-Modern HH, this time priced for beginners with a £149 ($192 guideline) price tag.
Okay, it doesn’t have the roasted curly maple neck or the Babicz FCH Z fixed hardtail bridge, the Telsa high-output electric guitar pickups are now a pair of HBZ Custom Wound 1Hb ferrite high-output humbuckers. But there’s still a lot of guitar for the money – as you would expect from a Harley Benton guitar.
The ST-Modern HH is part of the Thomann-owned brand’s Deluxe Series so of course we have some roasted Canadian maple for the neck, with a laurel skunk strip down the back.
This should be a fast neck; it is described as a “smooth C” and measures 20.5mm at the 1st fret, 22.5mm at the 22nd. It is bolted to a solid poplar body that has some comfort contouring and a tapered heel to aid passage up to the upper registers.
The fingerboard is laurel. As you might expect, no rosewood at these prices so we have a laurel fingerboard, but get this, there are rounded fingerboard edges, and we still have the high-performance 12” to 16” compound radius on that fingerboard. Those 22 frets? Premium nickel-silver with a medium-jumbo gauge.
There are lots of premium touches, such as the Harley Benton-branded Sung-Il ML-55 locking tuners (the same as on the ST-Modern HH Plus), and we particularly like that the dual-action truss rod can be adjusted via a spoke wheel at the top of the fingerboard. It makes setup tweaks a lot easier.
The big text will be how those HBZ humbuckers shape up. Well, at least you get a similar set of controls as the Plus version – there is a three-way pickup selector, a master volume, and a master tone, and a push-pull coil split on the latter for single-coil spank on demand.
They have thought of everything. As per your other Deluxe Series Bentons, this has a DLX hardtail bridge that is strung through the body. The hardware is chrome. The pickguard three-ply.
The guitar itself potentially moddable; these entry-level Bentons are great platforms to experiment with. And the guitar is of course incredibly affordable, available now for £149, which in dollars is $192 as a guideline price. Finish options include Daphne Blue, Black and Seafoam Green, and there's good news for southpaws – the Seafoam Green version is available left-handed.
You can check out more pics over at Harley Benton. You can order one direct from Thomann. And if you are in the US, point yourself to the Harley Benton Reverb Store.
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