Opinions on Harley Benton

Recently,I've been looking around at various Les Paul Double Cut Junior offerings, and the cheapest of the bunch easily is Harley Benton. They have a significant variety of colors for the instrument (I love the Pelham blue finish), and the 22 reviews are mostly positive. I wanted to see if anyone else on this site has had experience with either this specific instrument, or Harley Benton in general. I was also wondering if anyone knows about the production of these instruments (i.e., if the instruments were made using slave or child labor).

https://www.thomannmusic.com/harley_benton_dc_junior_ltd_pelham_blue.htm#bewertung

The other LP DC JR i'm looking at is the Vintage V130, which has fewer color options and is double the price, but if that is because it is made "more ethically", i would be willing to pay that. $400 is still relatively cheap for a guitar.

https://vintageguitarsus.com/electric-reissued-details/#v130

I haven't had any personal experience with Harley Benton, but they seem to be good products for their price. I don't remember where I saw it, but they were selling a speaker cabinet with a high-quality speaker that actually cost more than the cabinet itself. There have been many videos showing Harley Bentons, and they typically have little issues, but I think that's to be expected at such a low price. I'm sure you can get a great setup put on it though to fix up any issues.

That's a great question about the ethical treatment of their employees. That is something I should think about more as well. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find information on the shops that build them.

If you do get one, make sure to let us know what you think.

Great guitars at really cheap prices! I got a fretless Beatbass (violin bass much like the iconic Höfner Paul McCartney used, but a fretless version), and it has become my main bass both for live and recording, standing out among my numerous basses as my go-to bass!

However, it's not always the case, as I also got a 12-string acoustic from Harley Benton, which had several issues such as the string pairs being too far apart, and extremely terrible quality bridge pins (these were both fairly easy and cheap to fix though).

I honestly have no idea how ethically they are made, I'd imagine it's fairly ethical though as it's Europe's biggest guitar supplier and something would have come up by now if it wasn't(?). However, these days I tend to buy used guitars locally, which often works out even cheaper.