Harley Benton HB-35 Plus | The best budget 335 style guitar money can buy in 2021? Review & Demo

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This is the Harley Benton HB-35 Plus in Metallic Green!

The HB-35 Plus is clearly Harley Benton’s take on the legendary Gibson 335 semi-acoustic electric guitar, but of course at the typical Benton budget point – the HB-35 Plus came in at €249 when I filmed this video in August 2021.

Get the HB-35 Plus here:

This video came about because I recently did a review/demo of the Harley Benton Aeolus (the link to that video is below), which is sort of a cross between a 335 and a Les Paul. And a bunch of you asked me to shoot the Aeolus out against the HB-35, so here we are!

The HB-35 Plus has some pretty decent specs going on for the €249 price. You get a maple body and neck (with a pau ferro fingerboard), generic but functional hardware, and a pair of Roswell humbuckers which can both be split down to single coils. So, this guitar should be capable of a vast array of sounds. The neck itself is also pretty nice: you get a decent-sized modern C neck profile, 22 medium jumbo frets, a 305 mm/14” radius and Gibson scale length, which is 628 mm – all in all, this makes the guitar very easy to get your hands round.

Now, I generally associate this kind of semi-acoustic guitar with indie and rock players (like Jason Isbell, Mando Diao, Brian Fallon and Dave Grohl), but many people see the 335 as being a more classic instrument, and point to players like Larry Carlton, BB King, and even Chuck Berry. So, with those artists alone, we’re looking at a bunch of different styles to test the HB-35 in!

And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. In this video, I put the HB-35 Plus through its paces playing some pop, indie, folk, rock, and even some Drop D metal riffs, and we’ll see how it handles it!


Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:

00:00 Hello!
00:40 Introduction to the Harley Benton HB-35
01:24 A bit about 335 style guitars and who plays them
02:33 HB-35 specs and info
04:57 Today’s rig

Clean Sounds
05:53 Clean tone reference chords with all pickup/coil split options
06:42 Poppy barre chords
07:18 Ringing open pop chords
07:49 Indie pop picked chord arpeggios
08:32 Soul pop chords
09:01 Country ballad arpeggios
09:32 Indie droning chord progression
10:13 Bluesey southern rock riff
10:38 Fake jazz chords with tone control test

Light/Medium Crunch Sounds w/Greer Lightspeed
10:57 AC/DC inspired classic rock riff
11:32 Airbourne inspired classic rock riff
12:08 Hendrix inspired classic rock riff
12:45 Groovy classic rock riff
13:40 Indie rhythm chords
14:09 Indie octave chords riff
14:33 Indie rock barre chords
14:59 HB-35 volume control roll-off test
15:39 Kings Of Leon inspired epic indie rock riff

High-gain overdrive sounds
16:12 Classic hard rock riff
16:49 Glam rock riff
17:20 Foo Fighters inspired modern rock riff
17:56 Chunky alt rock chords
18:23 Modern alt rock riff
18:37 Pop punk riff
19:08 Pop punk melodic lead riff
19:44 Punk rock power chords
20:15 Rage Against The Machine inspired groovy riff (Drop D tuning)
20:52 Progressive rock riff (Drop D tuning)
21:26 Modern rock palm-muted power chords (Drop D tuning)

Clean Channel w/Revv G3 Distortion Pedal (all in Drop D tuning)
21:50 Hardcore chugging riff
22:05 Thrash metal riff
22:25 Hardcore punk riff
22:55 Mastodon inspired metal riff with country twang
23:19 Hardcore punk chugging verse riff
23:40 Classic heavy metal/sludge riff


24:13 My thoughts on the HB-35 Plus’s versatility
24:54 First impressions: that Metallic Green finish and looks
26:26 Weight
26:58 Build quality and hardware
28:56 Playability and the neck
31:11 Sounds
35:03 What’s the competition for the HB-35 Plus?
37:50 Final conclusion and goodbye


Here’s my video on the Harley Benton Aeolus:


I ran the HB-35 Plus into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, using my Greer Lightspeed for the overdrive and my Revv G3 for the heavy distortion sounds. The amp went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done.

Here’s some links to those bits of gear:

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H&K Black Spirit 200 head:
Greer Lightspeed:
Revv G3:
Focusrite 4i4 (this is the newer equivalent of my 2i4, which they don’t make any more!):
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Enjoy!


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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#HarleyBenton #HB35 #HarleyBentonHB35 #Gibson335


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