Harley Benton DC-600 VI Vintage Series Reviews

Not the best, but damn, its good!

Pros: 3 humbuckers, tone versatility, price, color, vintage look, 24 frets, modding ability, quietness, almost everything.

Cons: Neck binding a little bit covered with fretboard varnish on top side - problem solved with a razor, but I scratched her a little bit on a few points because of that intervention; rear plastic plate for covering electronics is carved bad and rough, they missed right measures for a milimeter on some points; golden finish hardware loses golden shine in a year or two and becomes flakey (too thin golden layer); not so friendly for setup as it has screws on pickup side. It is not easy to do low string action, but it is possible.

Great guitar for this money. Dont look further for 200 euros price range if you need good humbucker guitar, that is also very good looking. Everyone will ask where did you bought it! Legitimate Black Sabbath and The Doors sound!

9/10, only because of a few bad cosmetic details.

Amazing for the price point

Incredible how much guitar you get for the price. After a quick set-up, it plays better than some of my high end guitars.

I got the bad one

when I bought the guitar I also paid for set-up to change string gauge (with 0.12 strings that I also bought) which also included electronics check,

got the guitar and it doesn't work, only buzzing and humming sounds.

Can't play the guitar at all and I need to pay a technician in my country to repair my *brand new guitar* because shipping it back and forth will cost me even more money then repair it myself.

Also the frets are not smooth to play, the neck is bended and the tuning pegs are loose.

Really wanted to love this one

Beautiful Guitar

This guitar is a fantastic addition to my collection. Beautiful sound, and a great overall look.

A lot of guitar for any amount of money

I purchased this guitar expecting to get a cheap guitar with acceptable quality. Large surprise. The one I received is perfect and sounds great! It is comparable to one three times the price. Solidly built with great attention to detail. Don't be fooled by the bargain price, this guitar exceeded my expectations and will be one of my favorites.

A beautiful guitar with great sound! But one suggestion

No one can say this isn't a great looking guitar. The pickups lend themselves to either clear sound or heavily distorted hard rock. The fretboard is on the wide side and very comfortable enabling clear quick finger-work. And the weight in the 7 lb range is very comfortable when doing a 4 hour gig. I only had a bit of trouble with the tuners which should really be upscaled to make this inexpensive guitar perfect.

For the money, just sick!!

I wanted a Gibson 3-pickup SG. They're $4-5k and up in the used market. I'm not primarily a guitar player, so that didn't make sense. This for under $300 sure did! With a few tweaks, it feels and sounds amazing. The pickups are strong, the neck is straight, and it sounds like it's supposed to. What a deal. I'm very impressed with the HB stuff for the price!

Great budget SG

Great value for the money, good sound, and features for an SG style guitar.

Poor craftsmanship

Misaligned screws on the pickups and bridge, terrible signs on the Headstock near the very badly cut nut.The binding of the fretboard was the worst I ve ever seen on a guitar. Clearly a b stock sent during black friday as a new guitar. This instrument should have never been sent to me. This is my third HB, very satisfied by the previous instruments even though they also had small flaws. Unfortunately this one goes back without even testing it on an amp. Very disappointed. I will give it two stars because the materials seem decent but the craftsmanship was absolutely terrible.

Harley Benton DC-600 VI

The Harley Benton DC-600 VI offers very good value for money at £179 and would be an excellent first guitar for someone requiring a wider range of sonic possibilities.

I bought a Vintage VS6 SG second hand a few months ago for a song on eBay and this has become my favourite guitar so I thought I would treat myself to a three pickup version for my birthday when I saw the HB.

I will start with the things that I like:

The guitar was very well packed. The first thing that struck me was the cream paint job. Absolutely flawless and beautiful. The neck is also very nice and the action is low. The overall weight of the guitar is pleasing and I would say perfect

The fretboard is ok but not perfect. It looked a bit dry so I gave it a coat of lem oil. The inlays have been put in well but there were a couple of wood imperfections on a couple of frets.

The frets have no sharp edges which are often present on cheaper guitars. More on them later.

The electronics work perfectly and the pots have a lovely smooth feel and are easy to use with the top hat knobs. The pickups are ok for clean stuff and offer a wide range of tone with the three volume and one tone set up. They don't offer the same quality of sound when playing through distortion as the Vintage VS6 SG However the latter guitar is twice as expensive!

Now the things I didn't like as much:

The electronics backplate was very badly cut. I had to take it off, smooth it off with a file and wet and dry paper. The screws for it also weren't countersunk. The pick guard screws holes had also been countersunk too deeply.

The intonation was way out on the D string. I had to remove all the strings on the guitar ( which weren't put on professionally- didn't stay in tune) and reverse the intonation blade on the D string to set it up properly. The intonation screws have Phillips heads which I have never seen on a tunamatic bridge before and don't like them! What's wrong with normal flat head screws on tunamatic bridges?

I used a Rolson flat head screwdriver to adjust them having had previous problems with Chinese Phillips screws stripping in the past. The most annoying thing however were the frets weren't polished which lead to any string bending producing a horrible grating sound and feel when initiated.

Who wants to be getting out masking tape and wire wool on a new guitar to polish the frets. Not me!

However now that's done and I've put on some Ernie Ball 10's

( properly). The guitar sounds a lot better and stays in tune.

In conclusion as I said the guitar offers great value for money but isn't perfect for an experienced guitarist. It could have been if a little more effort and care had been taken. I do realise that every second counts in terms of costs on these guitars. It would be better to put the price up to £200 and rectify the faults I've mentioned I believe.

Amazing

I got this guitar just because I thought it would be a cool mod platform. However, it plays and sounds so good I ended up just making a custom pick guard and keeping it as is! I am in disbelief how they could make a guitar this good for the price!

Well made! Great value!!

Looks great, sounds great! Very nice Quality.

I was the unfortunate one who got a bad one

I own many HB guitars all perfect 5 stars… with the exception of the one I wanted to love the most the DC600VI SG. I always wanted a real one but to pricey, this was a dream when I saw HB made one. The back of the neck is bumpy, the best way to describe it. Not smooth as a neck needs to be. Not sure what happened as the paint covers up the issues. If cut by a CNC machine something went wrong. The guitar other than that looks great but it’s simply uncomfortable to play with humps and bumps. Let’s see if HB addresses this. I’ve owned it for a year and tried to ignore the neck, but it simply doesn’t feel good in the hands I’m a player of 50 years now, so not un experienced. To be clear I love Harley Bentons!, the DG Strat I received is better than any real fender I have ever owned! The Guitar bass I received is equally better than fenders similar offering. Intonation when adjusted by me Perfect! Fenders have an issue.

looks awesome sounds great.

But you will have to replace the tuners . NBD

Back cover cut by a child, neck is LARGE.

I really wanted to like this guitar, and the sound is there. Unfortunately, the neck is wider than I am used to, and to get the pickups to maximum sustain, they have to be too close to the strings, and they interrupt your picking. Overall I like it, but plan on some serious setup changes, in an effort to make it more playable.

Exactly what I was looking for

I wanted this guitar for two main reasons. I wanted something different than what I already have, and I didn’t have anything SG like. Secondly I wanted something that was well built enough not to necessarily need work but that was within a certain range that I dont have to worry about messing it up.

There arent any finish flaws or dings etc.

Its very Light and quite resonant

The hardware is just on the passing side of acceptable but that’s what i was looking for. The nut is poorly cut and is the number one issue but I’ll fix that eventually

The pickups sound fine, but the wiring is a little confusing and the guitar didnt ship with a pup selector diagram which is sorely needed.

Overall i cant find any real deal breaking problems. The neck is skinny but thick, it’s very comfortable and feels like a “real” SG. Ive played A few and actually i prefer this. It feels much more solid. I think because of the extra material on the upper horn.

Well worth the price. I can see why people want to boycott HB, they make better guitars for the money than the big G brand.

Ok for somebody new

I thought this was okay first but little problem after another eventually made this guitar unplayed for 2 years it sits in the corner not doing anything, I believe HB do some really good cheap low end instruments but the guitar this is trying to be is over £10k I would of prefered a more simple Tele or Strat by Harley benton like the others I've tried

great for the price

Great guitar for the price.

Harley Benton DC-600

Guitar came very quickly and in excellent shape. Very impressed with the guitar

Unfortunately a bust

Sadly, the quality control on this was terrible. There were several dead frets and a lot of fret sprouting. The action was high but the bridge was very difficult to lower. Also, the machine head on the low E string was mis-drilled and the screw will not hold in place. On top of that, one of the strap bottoms came loose and won’t tighten and the 3-way toggle is very sticky and hard to switch. I was very disappointed.