This is the Harley Benton ST-Modern in Sea Foam Green: a new, super affordable HSS Strat style guitar with great specs alongside modern playability and feel!Get the ST-Modern here:
I said super affordable… the ST-Modern is €179. That puts it squarely at the same budget price point as the cheapest Squier guitars – the HSS Sonic Strat in this case, which is also €179 in Europe – but what you get for your money here is, frankly, pretty ridiculous!
The ST-Modern has a poplar body and a roasted maple neck for starters. It’s a modern feeling neck, with a comfy modern D profile and a compound 12-16” fingerboard radius. There’s a 42 mm graphite nut, the scale length is 25.5”, and you get 22 medium jumbo nickel silver frets with rounded ends on a laurel board.
At the headstock, you get Sung-Il locking tuners. You also get a double action truss rod with the adjustment wheel at the body – and I love that easy access, especially at this price point.
So far, so good. At the body, we have excellent upper fret access thanks to the deep double cutaway and contouring, and the HSS pickups (the bridge humbucker also has a coil split for even more tones) are Harley Benton’s own HBZ brand. The vibrato bridge is Sung-Il.
All things considered, this is a lot of guitar – on paper – for the money. HSS Stratocaster-types are supposed to be some of the most versatile out there, but just how good can the ST-Modern be for this price? And is it simply worth dropping the extra cash for the extras (like stainless steel frets) you get with the excellent ST-Modern Plus?
That’s what we’re about to find out! In this video, I put the ST-Modern through its paces in as many different musical styles as I can, from country, folk and indie, to pop, rock, punk, metal, and more.
Let me know your thoughts on the ST-Modern in the comments!
Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:
00:00 Hello!
00:21 Introduction to the ST-Modern
01:37 Specs and info
04:55 Today’s rig and plan
Clean Sounds
05:35 Clean tone reference chords on all pickup settings
06:06 Grungey droning chords
06:25 Funk rhythms
06:38 Country tones
06:58 Ascending droning indie chords
07:11 Blues progression
07:22 Jangly chords
07:43 Ringing open indie pop chords
07:57 Art pop chords
08:15 Tone control test
09:17 Strummed folk pop chords
Light and Medium Overdrive Sounds
09:34 Kings Of Leon inspired riff
09:40 Fat indie rock rhythm chords
10:13 Southern rock arpeggios
10:32 Garage rock riff
10:49 Choppy barre chords
11:07 Upbeat indie barre chords
11:30 Volume control roll off test
11:52 Indie octave chords
12:18 Airbourne inspired rock riff
12:29 AC/DC inspired riff
12:47 Quacky rock riff
12:56 Classic rock riffs
13:36 Hendrix inspired riff
Fuzz Sounds (JHS Bender)
13:55 Black Keys inspired riff
14:10 Alt rock riff
14:43 Classic fuzz rock
15:11 Indie rock melodic riff
Heavy Overdrive Sounds
15:31 Van Halen inspired riff
15:52 Glam rock riff
16:12 Single note melodic rock riff
16:33 80s rock riff
16:55 Foo Fighters inspired modern rock riff
17:13 Punk rock sounds
18:21 Progressive rock riff
18:36 Modern rock palm-muted chords
19:01 Rage Against The Machine inspired groovy riff
19:17 Thrash riff
Heavy Distortion Sounds (all in Drop D)
19:26 Metal chugging riff
19:43 Mastodon inspired metal riff with country twang
19:55 Heavy metal lead sound
20:10 Hardcore punk riffs
20:58 Rammstein inspired industrial metal riff
21:11 Classic heavy metal/sludge riff
21:56 My thoughts
22:41 First impressions and looks
23:08 Weight
23:39 Build quality and hardware
25:11 Playability and neck
26:06 Volume knob position
26:49 Sounds and pickups
29:51 What other similar HSS guitars are out there?
30:29 Is the ST-Modern Plus worth the extra money?
32:29 Other competitors
34:19 My conclusions on the ST-Modern and why you should buy it
My setup was as follows: I ran the guitar into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, also using my Greer Lightspeed, JHS Bender and Revv G3 pedals for overdrive and heavy distortion sounds (and a cheeky TC Triple Delay for the lead sound!). 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.
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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.
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