Harley Benton DC-Junior Faded Cherry Reviews

Classic, vintage looks and modern feel

An extremely comfortable guitar that's weighted well and easy to play. The satin finish is flawless, the wrap-over bridge is not sharp as some purchasers have experienced and the guitar arrived with low action and almost perfect intonation. The hardware is excellent quality and the vintage tuners do their job well, keeping the guitar in tune. I have a diverse range of HB's and this is up there with the best of them...great value, playability, looks and weight...plus it's a tenth of the price of an American equivalent that can't possibly achieve being anywhere near 10 times as good!.

Don't need no Gibson No Mo'

Added Duncan P-99's s in the NECK position as well as the bridge. Added Schallers and had it Plekk'd. Don't need Gibson no mo'.

Simply great

I'd wanted a Junior style for so long, but never saw myself much as a single P90 kind of player. This arrived, I did some preliminary setup and put on a set of 11-56s, plugged it in and it just screams. What a guitar for the money! The fit & finish was top notch, I couldn't find a single blemish on mine. The fretwork, perfect, no buzzing and they weren't even scratchy out of the box. Perfectly intonated and the tuners aren't half bad either, no tight spots or skipping, if not my personal style - I'd have loved a model with larger deluxe style tuners or maybe Grover style tuners even more! For the 170 it cost, I couldn't be any happier though. It's a simple workhorse of a guitar, that plays great, sounds excellent, and doesn't cost so much that I'd be worried about it picking up some battlescars in its life.

Rock

Changed pick up and it rips

Classic looks with a smooth satin feel

I was expecting this guitar to have a clear poly coat over the paint, and it did not! This guitar looks and feels like a much more expensive instrument. I highly recommend picking one of these up if you’re looking for a single pickup guitar

Meh

Bought this because I wanted a p90 guitar and didn’t have one.

Playability and sound-wise it’s more or less on par with a squire product (caution that pickup is quite noisy however). Quality wise… this was not well made.

It seems as though the fretboard is darkened with the use of a dye? They forgot to dye the bottom end of my fretboard and it looks comical. Doesn’t effect playability, but it does bother me. Intonation is sharp by about 5-7 cents on 12th fret even with saddles all the way back on E and G strings. Without the use of a tuner I don’t know that I could hear that? But again it bothers me.

This is my second Harley Benton product, the other was much better.

Sound wise it sounds just like a p90 should but there must be zero shielding because it’s very noisy.

Not upset enough to return, but wouldn’t buy again.

Great guitar punches well above its price point

Arrived safely, no damaged. Fantastic sound. Once setup to my preference it was a joy to play. I tend to find you need to spend a good few hours playing a new guitar, get familiar with it. I made some adjustments to the pickup height and the poles,.I prefer to try get the most out of the stock hardware if possible and rarely see the need to change.

Good 🎸

excellent customer service

Feels very nice in hand

Good weight

Comfortable

Unfortunately saddles sharp and breaking strings.

A Rock Machine!!

This is my first Harley Benton guitar. The Harley Benton DC-Junior in faded cherry. I feel certain the intonation was set perfectly when it was shipped and after travel was the slightest bit off. Corrected that and swapped out for my usual brand of strings and this is ROCK MONSTER!! The P90 single coil (highly underrated, in my opinion) is great. I'd never heard of Roswell before, but this is a great pickup. Love the vintage rock sounds I get out of this guitar. I will be buying this same guitar in the FAT version (I love the '59 style LP DC with the bigger neck) and will highly recommend Harley Benton to my friends. I had never heard of this brand before, but if your other products are on par with THIS guitar, I am one sold, loyal customer. Thanks.

Simple, My best feeling guitar!

This guitar is everything that I could've asked for and more from a jr. style guitar. It played amazing coming right out of the box! The setup was good, and it was perfectly intonated right out of the box. My only thing with this is that the pickup in this guitar sits so far from the strings that the output level is much lower than I would like.

Great service

Delivery in 7 days to New Zealand, unbelievable. Good quality instrument , better than described !

Great service Thank you

Rockin little guitar

I have had sg jr. les paul jr. all lost to the need of money or stupidity and this one wins it on the frets.They are perfect.The sound of pickups great no problems by me on this guitar

excellent out of the box

Together with my sc450 plus this is the second (out of 4) HB to be almost perfect out of the box. Almost because as with all guitars below a certain price point, the nut needed a little lowering ...it still played fine with no sharp notes when fretting the first few frets but its just nicer to play with a little lower action at the nut....possibly personal preference. I was pleased to find that once i lowered the action i still had range left should i want to lower the bridge further, which was not the case with my SC yellow mustard that uses the same bridge. starting action was 2.1 and 1.6mm out of the box, tweaked it down to 1.8 and 1.4mm, electrics are just fine but if you want to get closer to a Leslie west mountain tone you might want to raise the pickup 2/3mm. volume control works great to alter the nature of the sound. High fret access is fantastic and surprisingly frets were really nice and polished ....even the strings had a new feel to them so left them on. I normally buff up the frets and change strings straight away but not with this guitar. Feels like this is a fairly recent manufacture and so had little shelf life. Overall, couldn't really ask for more...even at three time the price......now i'm curious about the FAT model .....

Nice guitar

you get a really nice guitar for the price.

maybe is asking to much, but if the fret would be polished it would add a lot of value to the guitar, and a complete diferent reaction from you clients .

all an all fantastic price quality

100% guitar for less than 70% of the money

Like everyone else, I've seen countless online reviews and unboxings but you just never know what's staged, what's fixed before filming or whatever. I actually wanted a B stock on my Harley Benton DC-Junior because I HATE making the first scratch and I like a bargain like anyone. Each time B-Stocks came up, which was rare, they seemed to be gone within minutes. Makes sense...nobody wants to return and EVERYONE wants one! When I got mine and finally unboxed it, the only and I mean ONLY complaint I could register was that the nut ends were sharp as hell. That's it. THAT'S IT. The pickup spacing relative to the strings was great! Every con I've seen on other sites did not apply to my new guitar. I could have literally played a gig the same day. I suppose if I was SUPER PICKY, I don't 100% LOVE the satin finish all over the body, neck, etc. but I really don't like super thick polyurethane either. Outside of a custom color, there is NOTHING about this guitar I don't truly love and wouldn't be proud to order again...which I will probably do.

Great Value

For the money, you can't go wrong. I didn't have very high expectations, but was pleasantly surprised.

good guitar, but there are a few problems

Comfortable neck, good sound, good machine heads. But there was a bit of dirt on the guitar. And rust (or other dirt) on the frets.

Just buy one...

What can be said about this guitar? Its an absolute steal of a guitar when you think its all mahogany, a glued-in neck, really well made, solid in the hand, not too heavy but not flimsy either. The P90 pup is OK, by no means the worst, and if its not to your tastes, change it, at this money and given the overall build quality whats to lose?? I don't know how they do it at this price? Quite how Gibson and others manage to charge people upwards of a grand for similar instruments speaks more about them than the bargain-basement pricing of Harley Benton says about this guitar. Seriously, if you want to go simple, go a bit 'punk', or slide is your thing, get one!

Great Product and great service!

I was curious about Harley Benton guitars so I bought a DC-Junior in faded cherry. I've been playing for over 50 years & owned or have owned many different brands. This guitar competes with anything. Great workmanship. Great tone. Great set-up. It was delivered quicker than I expected. I'm going to order a ST style Harley Benton soon. I love it!

I bought this mostly to get the pickguard template. I make Pickguards for a living. With that in mind I still will be keeping this guitar. I'm not super into the pickup but that's not too crazy for an entry level guitar. The wood, finish and Playability are pretty great. I installed new pickup and it came alive. It's a great guitar for the price. Hell, its a great guitar at double or triple the price. The only complaint is the nut and a few finish issues. Both are completely acceptable at this price. I am happy to get a single ply tort on it.