DC-Custom Cherry : A Monster Quality Guitar

There isn't anything about this guitar that I don't like. It just feels right from the moment you pick it up to the feeling you get playing it, and the reverence you give it putting it away in the case. I know that sound flowery, but every word of it is true.

You hear people get critical of it because of the neck dive. This is a pet peeve of mine when Gibson made incredibly heavy guitar bodies, no neck dive there, and then they tried to lighten them up by making the body thinner, only to be met with jeers saying they were cheapening up the guitars.

So along comes a solid mahogany body that is so light you could play with it all night and experience zero fatigue, and on top of that they give you a neck with 24 frets, yes, two whole scales so you can hit that high E in your solos. So, what does that give you, but a long neck that is thin enough for playing ease, and a body you can gig with easily; it's perfect.

Then the pickups are the LAF's which are fashioned after the Gibson PAF series which have incredible warm tones for clean settings, and yet give you enough of a bite for distortion. If you want to go heavier metal then an HAF pickup guitar is the one for you. My CST-24T is a dream with the HAF's which by the very nature of high gain pickups they are going to be darker for the clean tones, but really make a pedal explode. Then in the wisdom of Harley Benton guitars they give you the coil split, which cleans them up wonderfully. Okay back to the DC Custom cherry.

I noticed by opening the back-access cover that there are two of the four conductor wires joined together so they are ready to be split coils. (At least the one I received in late 2020 had them) So if you want to add a mini switch, or a push pull pot you can easily have that option as well. The LAF; s sound perfect to me. That last thing I would do is consider a pickup swap.

One thing that really deserves special mention is the way this guitar stays so well in tune. It is not uncommon to open the case and find the guitar is still in tune.

Here is an observation I made in the way HB cuts the nut. They still have the thick nut but only create a trough on just the beginning of the nut. The trailing edge of the nut overall slopes downwards strongly, and what that does is create a situation in that the trailing edge of the nut never touches the string. It's an ingenious way of eliminating the nut bind typical of Gibson guitars due to the sharp edge of the nut as the string leaves the back side that binds when doing string bends. The same system is on my 450SC GT P90 and it stays incredibly well in tune. (Yes, even the G string) Why didn't Gibson think of these things?

I guess this is getting lengthy so I should wrap it up. A couple things worth mentioning is the beauty of the solid mahogany body and neck; the grain is incredible. The thin fast neck that makes playing with ease a constant. The little tapers on the edges of the body adding all the more to the comfort, and the number one thing is the action. It sits closes to the frets without any buzz. The tuners that are on their work fine, no need to swap them out either. I find a lot of people think because of the low price that they are going to need to do a lot of upgrades; it just isn't so. Don't go buying any gear to do upgrades. Play the guitar first, you will be shocked at the level of quality for this kind of money it's nuts. I'm on my 8th HB guitar now with my new order. What Harley Benton has done is give the vast majority of us a model and style of guitar that we wouldn't normally be able to afford. So, I went nuts rounding out my collection with styles that I gave up dreaming of, and now have. It's like a kid in a candy shop. I'll take one of those, and one of those, and ah yes, two of those. Highly recommended. Love Harley Benton guitars.