Harley Benton DC-Junior FAT Faded Cherry Reviews

Beautiful.

Solid.

Very well made.

Great fit and finish

Excellent fretwork

A few wood scratches, nothing noteworthy

Immediately changed the pickup to a SD Antiquity, CTS pots and raised it with Lollar shims.

Tomorrow will put Hipshot locking tuners on it.

It's a phenomental guitar.

Great new version!

Love the new FAT versions, please make more versions in different colors and for lefties!

You can’t beat the quality for the price point, and if you are modder person this is a great platform to start from!

It is OK but not worth the cost

I can live with the color. Neck and fret board feels OK....but the tuner are no good...

They should lower the price.

The best one yet!

This is my third Harley Benton, and also the one I like the best! I have had a few Les Paul's in the past but I've never had a DC JR. I really like this guitar. mahogany body and set mahogany neck, with an ebony fingerboard that has an almost dark mocha swirl going through it, that is subtly "eye catching" and very smooth feeling. The stacked P90/HB covers quite a few option's with the use of the tone dial, too. And sounds really good! The tuners are good and work well. The bridge, now here is the weak point of an otherwise excellent guitar!

The bridge is well made, but I feel to high for the DC Jr. I adjusted it fully flat to the body and found I still wanted to drop it some more. I like my action low. It's also fairly sharp. I swapped it out for a Musiclily replacement bridge bought from Amazon for £12, after seeing a YouTube vid on it. It's a cheaper option bridge, but it's shorter and fit's straight on to the existing posts. Leaving you more room for adjustments either way. It's smoother on your strumming hand too! Change that bridge Harley Benton and this guitar is 10/10.

Happy With The Purchase!

I ordered 3 total guitars in one shipment to save on shipping costs.

I ordered the SC Custom P90 Black, SC Custom FR VB and the DC Junior FAT Faded Cherry. I have owned many guitars in my 50 years of life and am very happy for what I received vs. the prices that I paid. I would definitely buy a Harley Benson branded product again!

Good value, but needed some work

Had this on backorder for a while and was thrilled when it was delivered.

First impression is good. Fretwork is spot on.

The stacked P90 sounds good and reacts nicely to tone and volume changes.

Finish of the guitar feels great and looks good. Neck is nice, but not as thick as a 50's style Gibson.

Some minor flaws:

The nut wasnt cut properly. The slot for the D-string was not cut in the center so the string spaces were not evenly matched. I fixed this by mounting a Graph Tech Nut. No need to change the tuners now either. Something i doubted in the beginning.

The P90 wasnt mounted straight. It was slightly crooked. Fixed this myself. I drilled a new hole and put it straight.

The intonation was OK, except for the G-string. Could not get it right. But after changing the string with a new one, it was OK.

I will change the bridge for an aluminum version in the future,

The volume and tone knobs are the tophat type. Not very easy to use the use pull with these knobs. Changed them for speedknobs: problem solved.

Maybe i will change the pots for CTS pots, but for the time being they will do.

A good guitar, but it needed some tweaks to meet my demands.

2 small quality control issues: the nut and crooked pickup mounting.

An amazing guitar

I already have the SC-Junior single cut which is a great guitar and represents outstanding value for money, but this one is even better. What makes the biggest difference is the Fat '59 neck profile and slightly more pronounced curve of the fretboard radius. I don't have big hands, but It sits very very comfortably in mine and with the smoothness of the lovely enbony fretboard, make for a very comfortable playing experience. Fret ends are very well finished with no sprout whatsoever. The nut slots on the SC-Junior were cut a little too high and required deepening to achieve optimum action, but on this one the nut is cut to the perfect height. The range of sounds are expanded too with the single dog-ear pickup being switchable from parallel coil humbucking to single coil. The Wllkinson tuners fitted are also an improvement on the unbranded ones fitted on the SC-Junior. The standard of finish is superb throughout - the almost matt, almost open pore finish giving this instrument the feel of a vintage instrument. The only cons I can find are that the B and top E strings catch and ping a little in their nut slots - a common problem with 3-a-side headstocks but one easily solved with a little graphite and vaseline. Highly recommended - especially to other women players looking for a simple, lightweight rock machine.

DC Junior FAT

Guitar arrived when it was supposed to but with a very large split in the outer box. fortunately the inner box was unharmed.

Pro's

Nicely made body and a very good neck finish with no sharp frets, tuners are good and the neck profile is fatter than my HB SC I have.

Where these guitars win is with the Rosewell pickups, they are very responsive and the tone/volume pots have a good ramp which allows lot's of variation tonally, the comfortable neck makes the instrument very playable and the light weight won't break your back.

Cons

The control knobs are useless on the push/pull pot as you cant grip them.

On arrival I found the action a little high so had to use a lot of force on the bridge adjusting screws to lower it, additionally the adjustment is now at it's lowest setting which is a little worrying for any future neck movement.

Think there is a production fault on HBs routing as one of the retaining screws on the control cavity plate is breaking into the side of the control cavity. (same fault on my HB SC)

A terrific guitar that could be made perfect with a couple of improvements by HB (especially the bridge height issue)

Fantastic take on a classic

This guitar is clearly based on the iconic Gibson Les Paul Junior double-cut but is actually improved in some ways (hence giving 5 stars for features from what is a very simple design of guitar)

1. The Gibson had a bridge that could only be intonated by adjusting it at the two anchor points at the end posts. This HB bridge also has individual saddles for each string giving the user much more control.

2. The Gibson had a single P90, this HB has a stacked P90 that cain be split. Meaning you can choose between the P90 or a humbucking version. I've found the differences subtle but there is enough variety to give you more control of your sound.

All that said, this is a fantastic guitar, particularly at such a low price point. The tuners are good (solid 15:1 ratio Wilkinsons), the controls (1 x volume, 1 x tone (with ability to split the pickup)) are simple, classic and effective. There are D'addario strings on the guitar. The fit and finish is excellent and I particularly like the translucent thin satin coating (though I wouldn't consider it to be "open pore"). The chubby neck feels great in the hand too.

In terms of sound this has a pretty powerful P90 style Roswell (HBs own brand) pickup and can growl or clean up really well. This is the first single-pickup guitar I've owned and you really have a lot of fun, and can get a remarkable array of tones, with just a tweak to volume and/or tone.

I saw Guitar Geek review this months ago on Youtube and have waited patiently for this to arrive in stock; I have not been disappointed. My advice is buy one of these, you cannot really go wrong!

Superb value!

I was very pleasantly surprised by the build quality of this guitar. Playing it straight out of the box, it felt wonderfully comfortable, and the set up was near spot on. I corrected the intonation slightly, which was so easy with the cleverly designed wrap around bridge. I didn't expect great sounds, but I couldn't have been more wrong! It sounds great in either tapped or stacked mode! Peeping into the control cavity, it was pleasing to find full sized pots, unlike the usual miniature far Eastern fare. Being a gigging guitarist, I decided to install sturdier CTS pots. The pickup now sounds even better!

My only gripe was regarding the finish. The colour, and the grain of the two piece mahogany body looks great. Purely my personal taste, but I wasn't expecting it to be completely matte! No worries for me, as I got a nice sheen by applying wax polish. Overall, this is wonderful value for money. Having seen the budget offering from the originators of this design, at more that twice this price, it's a no brainer. Why pay for a label!

Well crafted tribute to a classic !

It was not tightly packaged (guitar a bit loose in inner box, inner box a bit loose in the outer box) but it arrived safely. Not in tune since it was shipped to USA, but not far off. The look and finish is beautiful. It reminds me of my 1st guitar, a 1963 Cherry Gibson Melody Maker. The hardware seems of high quality, still haven't used the tuners long enough to know. Tuners are vintage Kluson style, similar to those on my Melody Maker. The pickup sounds GREAT...very good cleans for Jazz & Blues, but it will also growl like a LP humbucker. It is a "stacked"? P-90 style humbucker. I gave it a 5 for "features" because although it COULD be a one trick pony guitar (one PU, 2 controls) it benefits greatly from a coil tap option to get more variety from the P-90 HB. Pull up on the tone knob and it sounds like a bridge single coil providing biting twang similar to a Telecaster. Everything is just beautiful as is. If I find the tuners need swapped that is ok, because the price is such a value for this instrument. I hope the people in Indonesia who crafted this guitar are making a fair wage because they apparently take pride in their craftsmanship.

Faded Cherry finish, mahogany body, ebony 'board on a "fat '59" chunky neck and the company's Roswell P90D stacked STK4P alnico-5 dog ear humbucker in the bridge tick some desirable boxes. It even has a coil-split accessible via push-pull to widen your tone options. Only the tuners will be replaced by locking tuners. Sublime finish. No remarks whatsoever for this price!