Harley Benton TE-62 CC Tremolo | How good can a €169 Tele with a Bigsby be?! In-depth Review & Demo

This is the Harley Benton TE-62 CC Tremolo – an affordable new take on the iconic Fender Telecaster… with a Bigsby (or at least, a Bigsby-alike)! Get one here: https://thmn.to/thoprod/626031?offid=... I’m a huge fan of Harley Benton’s Tele-type guitars. I bought the TE-62CC LPB (a predecessor of this guitar with a more standard Tele bridge) when it was released in 2021 – I’ve still got it today, and love it. For €149, that guitar is astonishing value for money. It’s simply a great, affordable Telecaster. The TC-62 CC Tremolo model takes the winning formula of the standard TE-62 CC and adds a Bigsby-type vibrato tailpiece, along with €20 to the RRP. This makes it €169, and the question I think everyone will be asking at this point is: how good can a sub $200 guitar with a Bigsby be? Well, if I trust anyone to get it right at this price, it’s Harley Benton. So, I bought one! (With my own money, so this video is 100% not sponsored!) And the specs for the TE-62 CC Tremolo look great on paper, as does the guitar in person. The Lake Placid Blue finish is stunning and sparkly, and the NotABigsby just oozes retro cool. No doubt about it, this guitar is a real eyecatcher! For your money, you get a basswood body, and a caramelized maple (which probably means roasted maple!) neck and fingerboard. The neck is a modern D shape with 21 frets, which feel like medium jumbo to me. The fingerboard radius is 305 mm/12”, and the scale length is a Fender-approved 648 mm/25.5”. You also get a pair of Roswell Alnico 5 Telecaster-style pickups, an ashtray bridge with three compensated brass saddles, and that no-name Bigsby-esque tailpiece. And here’s where I start to get a little worried. Making a Bigsby work on a guitar at this price point can’t be easy. In fact, no one else – that I know of – has managed it. Normally, you’d use a Mustang-style roller bridge or a modded Tele bridge for a guitar with this kind of tailpiece, as these help reduce any friction points and make the Bigsby function as smoothly as stably as possible. Here, though, the strings run through holes on the back of the bridge, creating unnecessary extra contact points. This worries me, because it could lead to the strings catching on the bridge and sticking. This could result in the guitar not returning to pitch after using the tailpiece. The extra friction could cause more string breaks too. All that said, then… how good can the TE-62 CC Tremolo be? Is it incredible value for money? Or will a Bigsby at this price prove to be one bridge (please pardon the pun!) too far, even for budget kings Harley Benton? Time to find out! Here, I put the guitar through its paces in as many different musical styles as I can, from country, folk and indie, to pop, rock, punk and some downtuned metal too! And of course, we’ll give the trem a real wiggle throughout and see how well the guitar holds tune, how good the Bigsby operation sounds, and how many strings we break. Let me know what you think of the TE-62 CC Tremolo in the comments! Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits: 00:00 Introduction to the TE-62 CC Tremolo 01:36 Specs and info 03:21 The TS01 Bigsby-style tailpiece 05:43 Today’s rig and plan 06:50 Clean tone reference chords 07:04 Clean tone samples (folk, country, pop, indie, blues, funk, etc.) 09:56 Tone control test 10:51 Bigsby testing riffs 12:38 Really hammering the Bigsby 13:17 Indie and alt rock tones 16:15 Volume control roll off test 16:39 Classic rock tones (AC/DC, Hendrix, Airbourne, etc.) 18:46 Hard rock tones 20:19 Punk rock tones 21:15 Progressive and modern rock tones 21:50 Metal/chugging/heavy distortion tones 23:17 My thoughts 24:18 First impressions and looks 25:09 Weight 25:49 Build quality and hardware 26:55 The Bigsby-style tailpiece 28:59 Playability and the tailpiece 30:31 Sounds and pickups 32:53 What other similar guitars are out there? 34:51 My conclusions on the TE-62 CC Tremolo and… should you buy it? My setup was as follows: I ran the TE-62 into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, also using my Greer Lightspeed and my Revv G3 pedals for overdrive and heavy distortion sounds, and my Source Audio Collider for delay and reverb. The amp went from the Red Box AE+ DI out straight into my Zoom H6 recorder. No post-processing on the sounds was done. Get all this gear at Thomann: https://thmn.to/thocf/jkhog8l06m Get all this gear at Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/LXqdE0 --- Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe. #HarleyBenton #HarleyBentonTE62 #HarleyBentonGuitar #HarleyBentonOfficial #Bigsby #Telecaster #RichWordsMusic Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much! ‪@HarleyBentonOfficial‬ ‪@ThomannsGuitarsBasses‬