Harley Benton guitar strings, any good ?

mark123

I'm going to order something from Thommann so i was going to stick a few sets of strings on as postage is free , are the Harley Bentons for £1.29 any good ? I notice Pyramid do sets for around £4.00  any experience of using these brands ?leave alone ? Or half decent ?

InactiveX

Don't know, but let us know what they're like!

TheModiesel

I've tried them before as when I buy guitars for me, I always play with 11's/12's but when I inevitably get fed up of it I put on the HB 10's as I've noticed they sell quicker. They're perfectly serviceable strings - if I didn't prefer the feel of Elixirs I would be ok with using them
 

MikeP

I would have thought they are made by one of the big name manufacturers anyway?

SteveRobinson

I've got a HB telecaster copy here that seems to have been equipped from new with D'Addario XLs

Tall_martin

I have a guitar with the Harley Benton strings on. They are perfectly decent.

I prefer elixer strings, I'm not sure they are better for the price

BillDL

I can only really compare the Harley Benton "Value" electric strings (big blue 9, 10, 11 on pack) with Rotosound, in particular Roto Yellows, because that's the only strings I've played consistently for many, many years.  I first bought a few packs of these probably around 7 years ago? (could have been longer though) while buying my 2nd Harley Benton guitar.  My intention was that if they were good enough to use for alignment and adjustments on partscaster and kit builds, and for temporary setups on problematic guitars I was repairing, then at the very low price I could treat them as disposable - responsibly of course.  Very cheap strings often don't intonate very well.

I was actually quite impressed by them.  I still preferred the overall tone of standard Rotosounds, but I felt that the differences in sound were not nearly significant enough for me not to just leave them on some of the guitars until they needed changed.  I always find it hard to describe the sound and feel of strings, but I felt the Harley Benton Value strings perhaps a little "stiffer" then the same gauge Rotos, and the overall sound perhaps a little less "punchy" than the Rotos.  The difference was subtle though and I didn't do any quick-change side-by-side comparisons.  Longevity?  I don't really like coated strings, and I find that Rotos last as long as I could reasonably expect uncoated strings to last.  I felt that the Harley Benton Value strings didn't keep their tone for quite as long, but it's hard to evaluate that accurately and maybe I just wasn't rotating the guitars and playing the HB-strung ones as often.  It's entirely possible that

I haven't bought any of the Harley Benton Savers for a couple of years now though, because I bought about 20 packs that have seen me through and I still have one or two left.

As @MikeP says, Thomann is a large enough company to have a big name making their strings and purchasing them in very large quantities.  They also sell direct without the middlemen dealerships needing to add on their own profits.  I think it's one of these instances where if something is priced lower that people expect in comparison with the higher priced known brand names, many people just assume them to be of low quality, when in fact the better known brands are just marked up a lot higher and are not sold direct to the customer.  "Too cheap to be taken seriously" isn't true in this case from my experience.

Just add on a dozen sets to your order.  If you don't like them, the G String makes a fine garrote .... or so I am told.

Alvin

The Pyramids are top quality Germany made , compare the price of them at  Strings Direct (other retailers are available) even with the Thomann postage , order enough and they are a steal.   I use the pure nickel round wounds , last ages and hold tuning great and that is .008's which you would think would break easy and be hard to keep in tune , nope not in the slightest .       In America they sell them as a premium import brand  ( like here with Curt Mangams ).         

DrJazzTap

I use them for the guitars I set up for charity. They do the job. 
I think I've had more issues with ernie balls and Martin guitar strings over the years. Rusty strings and ball ends popping off that sort of thing. 

mark123

Alvin said:

The Pyramids are top quality Germany made , compare the price of them at  Strings Direct (other retailers are available) even with the Thomann postage , order enough and they are a steal.   I use the pure nickel round wounds , last ages and hold tuning great and that is .008's which you would think would break easy and be hard to keep in tune , nope not in the slightest .       In America they sell them as a premium import brand  ( like here with Curt Mangams ).         

Thanks for everyones input , i think i'm swayed into getting a few sets of pyramids.

skullfunkerry

I tried a few sets of HB strings, and they’ve been fine. I had one that broke as I was tuning up, but that turned out to be a sharp edge on the tuner post. Other than that though, no issues: they feel fine, sound good and hold tuning.

mark123

skullfunkerry said:

I tried a few sets of HB strings, and they’ve been fine. I had one that broke as I was tuning up, but that turned out to be a sharp edge on the tuner post. Other than that though, no issues: they feel fine, sound good and hold tuning.

Might throw 3 sets in with the pyramids as they are so cheap.

lewisanderson

I'd recommend the Pyramid blue sets. If you buy more than 6, it works out around £3.60 a pack.

Dave_Mc

The Pyramids are excellent, but I've got some which were rusted out of the packet. Now- I'm not that fast to fit strings. I tend to avoid it, to be honest. So it might just be my house is damp or they were sitting around too long (or both). But they're not packaged in a protective atmosphere, they're just in paper packets. I've rarely had a problem with strings in those protective foil packets. I do really like them but I'll think twice about getting them again, because I've had one (more like several!) too many packets which I had to basically just bin...

I think one of my Harley Benton guitars came stock with Harley Benton strings- at least I assume it did, it didn't have the coloured D'Addario ball ends. They seemed not too bad at all, probably not just as nice as "branded" strings, but not terrible or anywhere close. I'm not sure exactly which Harley Benton strings they were, though...

Sporky

If you change the ball-ends they're just as good as Gibson strings.

(sorry) 

Dave_Mc

Sporky said:

If you change the ball-ends they're just as good as Gibson strings.

(sorry) 

No you're not 

But well played 

Revolutions

Where does one find these £4 pyramid strings? Strings direct only have £12 packs…

CarbonCopy

Revolutions said:

Where does one find these £4 pyramid strings? Strings direct only have £12 packs…

There's a clue in the first post.

Penn

Pyramid pure nickels are brilliant. 

mark123

lewisanderson said:

I'd recommend the Pyramid blue sets. If you buy more than 6, it works out around £3.60 a pack.

Tried that but no discount, i even put 9 packs in the basket but still no price reduction ? Old offer expired perhaps ?

Dave_Mc

Penn said:

Pyramid pure nickels are brilliant. 

Yeah, and so are the nickel-plated ones too. One thing I noticed with the pure nickels, though (aside from the rust/tarnishing I mentioned earlier!) is that they don't seem to be as vintage-sounding or -feeling as I expected. I don't have a ton of experience with pure nickel strings, so maybe I was expecting too much of a difference, but I seem to remember trying the LaBella pure nickel strings, and they were very vintage-sounding and -feeling, whereas the pure nickel Pyramids just felt and sounded like "good strings" and not massively dissimilar from the nickel-plated steel ones. Maybe you have to buy the dearer Pyramid pure nickel ones to get that really vintage tone and feel...

mark123 said:

lewisanderson said:

I'd recommend the Pyramid blue sets. If you buy more than 6, it works out around £3.60 a pack.

Tried that but no discount, i even put 9 packs in the basket but still no price reduction ? Old offer expired perhaps ?

Yeah I had a quick look and it doesn't seem to be on at the moment... it usually says on the product page if there's a mult-buy discount I think.