Harley Benton DC-Custom Cherry Reviews

Exceeds expectations

The features it provided for the price are very good, Grover tuners, The guitar was setup very well and I didnt feel any feature which made me feel that they had to cut any corners to sell it for the msrp. I wish my country had a Harley benton dealer so I could buy more without dealing with the customs and stuff

great guitar

great guitar to best bang for the buck

red SG what else do you need

childhood wish come true

red SG what else do you need

good quality workmanship

good setup out of the box

the nut is a little high on some strings

in general, harley benton pleases with good quality and not a high price

great store job

Nice looking guitar with a dull sound

First, the good part - I love the looks, and it's made fairly well. No fret sprouts, the binding is decent, and the action is low. The only quality issue was that the bridge was not properly grounded (the wire was just hanging in the cavity unattached), so I had to fix it myself, which wasn't too hard.

Features-wise, I'd like to have coil split push-pull. I think the recent versions already have it, though mine didn't.

Now the complaints. It's the sound. Compared to all my other guitars, this one sounded dull, dark, flat, and uninspiring. Because I liked it otherwise, I tried changing the pups: tried various humbuckers and even a set of Phat Cats (which sounded fantastic on my Epiphone Les Paul) - nothing helped. I managed to get out of it more or less decent high-gain metal tones, but it could not do anything else properly.

the guitar arrived, there are no external problems, the instrument looks great, but the contact in it leaves and because of this it does not work

My favorite guitar to play

I love the feel of the DC Custom Cherry neck. This guitar is the one that looks the best hanging on my wall and the one I reach for the most. It started with a great action set up, but I have been able to easily fine tune the action to just where I like it.

One cool sg

Super nice sg copy and incredibly surprised by how quality the guitar is, I play in drop c and it functions flawlessly and stays in tune without issue highly recommended

Can't find fault with it.

Had this guitar for a year now and still can't find fault with it.

Great finish, nice slim neck, Grover tuners,. Coil splitting, stays in tune well and was playable right out of the box.

No adjustments needed and an amazing bargain for just over £200 pounds.

Go get one.

Great Guitar

This plays really well with a bit of setting up. Great sustain and excellent tone. had to move strap button to mid neck position.

AC/DC 1970's what a beauty

Love the guitar is really great for the money I have a range of top branded guitars and this bad boy matches them really well.

I had to change the string when it arrived as they were pretty dead and also a few screws loss of worn but I have sorted them.

over all for the money and comparing to the epiphope it is way better fro the money.

The sound is amazing I have been running it with my blackstar 6l6 and tone is smoking hot

Fantastic quality

This guitar exceeds all expectations. Fantastic quality and finish. Plays and sounds better than other guitars in my collection. Perfect weight and balance. Huge thanks

Pretty good

Ordered this after spending 6 years on a 100 euro HSS strat from a unknown brand, as my first upgrade.

Wanted something with two humbuckers and 24 frets.

Out of the box, the guitar looks great. minor cosmetic flaws are a small chip-like thing right on the end of the binding on the corner, right after the end of the 24th fret, and some glue visible under the nut.

Build-wise, some screws on the pickguard and the screw that is on the truss rod are drilled at an angle. Again, only visual imperfections, doesn't affect playability.

Tuners and tuning stability after changing strings (the ones shipped were nothing special, I don' t think they were D'addario since they weren't mentioned in the product description. They were really thick, they might have been .11s, I now put on .09s since the guitar will be my E standard axe) are perfect, responsive and smooth, keeping it in tune nicely.

IMPORTANT, the guitar WILL neckdive if you have it on a regular nylon strap, but thankfully with my order I ordered a basic HB leather strap, and with it's raw leather inner layer it stays perfectly in place, so definetely buy a leather strap too if you don't have one.

Sound is great through my Katana 100 mkI, can play all the classic rock and bluesy stuff like Led Zep but can also dabble in playing some metal, as long as its not some ultra modern stuff like metalcore etc

NOW, the only giant flaw this guitar had was that, after a day of playing, the pickups (mostly the neck but it also affected the bridge a couple of times) and pickup selector suddenly decided they were not going to function. Actually, when you selected the neck pickup for example, it would be barely heard. Not completely off, just very very very quiet. And that is with my amps gain at max. The other one would be perfectly fine though. If I played with the selector a little, sometimes it would get fixed for a while, but then it would go quiet again. After two weeks, and not wanting to bother with returning it because it was perfect already, I brought it to my old guitar teacher who has a soldering iron. He didn't find any wires loose, everything was in place it seemed. With nothing else to do, he de-soldered and then re-soldered every single wire back, and that fixed it. The term he used was, literally translated from Greek, "it was probably a cold solder that caused it". I have no idea what the correct term is in english, that is what he said.

With new .09 gauge strings and a proper setup from my teacher, the action is now very low and very comfortable to play, no buzzing. With the old thick strings and the subpar setup job I gave it out of the box, I couldn't get it to stop buzzing on frets 0-5. Maybe it had to do with the strings, maybe it just needed a more experienced hand to do the adjustments, who knows.

Also, another remark from my teacher is that the nut is very high, ie it needs sanding. I don't want to bother with that right now though, the action is perfectly fine for now.

As a closing statement, coil split would be an excellent feature to add on this guitar, and definitely something I will do in the future, as the pickups sound great already, can't wait to hear how they sound split too.

tl;dr great guitar, just get it setup correctly, either by yourself or someone who knows what they're doing, and I hope you don't get a lemon in the wiring department like I did.

works great, cheap price

works great, cheap price. fun guitar

Nice

Very nice sounding and playing guitar

This is the best, forget the rest

I have always been a fan of the SG style guitar. My first guitar, back when I was a teenager was an SG. That was fifty years ago!! The price of most SG guitars are quite high. But this Harley Benton model offers the most for a very affordable price. Thanks guys.

Stunning

Ridiculous. That you can buy a guitar of this quality for the above price is criminal. It's stunning. I have a similar model of Epiphone, and had the Gibson equivalent for many years, and the Harley Benton is every bit as good, if not better than them. Fact.

Has become my Favorite HB so far. Plays and sounds amazing. My number 1.

Super impressed

I was very pleasantly surprised when this guitar arrived. Out of the box, the setup was almost perfect. I just tweaked the truss rod 1/8 of a turn and lowered the action by 1mm and now it is fabulous. It is so easy to play, and sounds great. Even the coil tap is useful, especially on the neck pickup to get a sweet lead tone.

Fit and finish are above what you would expect for a guitar at this price point. Mine was immaculate out of the box.

I actually prefer the single tone / volume knobs and location of the output jack to that on my "real" SG. It's less cluttered, and the cable can be wrapped around your strap more easily. Like all SGs there is a bit of neck dive, but the placement of the strap peg helps that a lot.

If you are thinking of buying an Epiphone SG I would highly recommend this guitar instead. In terms of playability it's actually up there with my 1970s Gibson. Very nice!

Wow

Right out of the box I was more than pleasantly surprised. This beauty came in-tune and the set up was to my liking. The fit and finish was of high caliber and after inspection there were no flaws that I could see. I immediately plugged it in and boom! Beautiful sounds abound. This was my first Harley Benton and I can promise you it will not be my last. Shipping and packaging was spot on.

A very nice SG!

Amazing sound and playability after a little set up! The finish, pick ups tuners and bridge etc are perfectly fine! The only downside was that the guitar I received had a little rough fretboard binding that needed some serious cleaning and polishing.

Just a little head's up for those looking to buy the guitar: The guitar has the skinniest neck I've ever felt on a guitar. I've tried multiple models and it seems like they've all got the same extreme curvature to the neck. It's almost like there's not enough meat on the neck to support the string tension. So whereas you would usually aim for a certain amount of relief in the middle of the neck, I would find that you'd get way more relief on other places on the neck as well, making a low action nearly impossible to achieve.