Harley Benton DC-Junior TV Yellow 4-stars Reviews

Great guitar

This guitar is a solid rock machine. I have many guitars and it never fails. Every time I plug this one in the guys in the band always start going on about how amazing it sounds. I highly recommend this guitar

Harley Benton DC-Junior TV Yellow

I read all the reviews before buying this and decided to buy one.

Firstly all the hardware is very good and the finish is excellent.

There are however some major issues to address if you need this to be a pro guitar tool.

I'm going to list the good points first.

Neck, nice dark fingerboard with expertly fitted frets with no sharp edges.

Neck shape, as other reviewers have said is not fat and not thin, just somewhere in between, I love it.

Pickup ok, seems to be noise cancelling and has a medium output.

Wrap around bridge is not bad and with the stud adjustment screws in the bridge I was able to fully intonate.

Machine heads are good, there's no slip and holds tuning very well.

The nut is white graphite and there's no friction to worry about here.

As I mentioned earlier, the finish on mine is as good as I've seen on any guitar, even the big names.

So far so good

Things in my opinion as a luthier, that will need to be addressed:

Pickup height straight out of the box is nowhere near close enough to the strings, so output is very low and uneven . The pickup will need raising at least 4.5mm to achieve a good balanced output. A dogear pickup shim or two will do this.

The machine heads on mine were all loose , some literally fell of when I removed the strings. The machine securing holes at the rear of the headstock will need plugging as these screws are too short to hold the machines in this mahogany neck, they should be longer.

The 500k tone control doesn't have a smooth taper even when the pickup is at correct height, it attenuates highs only on the last three digits of travel. This should be lower in value, I changed mine for a 250k log and this sorted the problem.

Finally to get max playability and low action from any guitar, fret dressing is usually required.

This guitar wasn't bad but like any guitar it did benefit from having one.

To conclude, I can honestly say this guitar punches well above it's weight and with some tlc will hold it's own with any name guitar out there.

I'm absolutely blown away with it.

Got a good one

This is possibly one of the nicer guitars I've ever owned, and I've had dozens.

But....I've had to do a but of work. Also, I've already ordered a couple of these and one was returned faulty and the other was sold on after giving up on it. I decided to get this one because I wanted a TV Yellow junior and took another chance...and it's paid off. Lower tier Harley Bentons can be a bit of a crap shoot but if you get a good one and know how to set up a guitar you're laughing.

This one came very well set up and it seems to be well constructed with good wood. Very resonant. The finish is great as well. But the bridge had issues with some of the saddles being rough and uneven. I had to replace 2 (I had some spares handy) and use a file to sort out the others. Most people would have had to return this because of it, even on a budget guitar this wasn't acceptable, but I have repair experience so I could fix it.

Now it's a great little guitar for the price. I've ordered a spacer for the P90 which is too low IMO (another thing Harley Benton should consider before selling these) but overall I'm happy with what I've got now.

Nice choice for P90

If you are looking for a guitar with P90 pickup to try out, this one is a perfect choice. Easy to play and quite small but the head always falls down by the balance of guitar, that's the one should be careful for accident.

Dirty Mustard

OK, forget the "TV Yellow", it is Dirty Mustard. Get over it. Move on. Fiesty P90 and good fretwork;, action little high and intonation rated subjectively at about 90% correct. Only the pots are a let-down: on or off with no real travel - exactly the opposite of what you want in a single P90 guitar. Buy it and love it for what it is: a ridiculously affordable but entirely playable entry-level guitar. Ironically, exactly what Gibson intended the original Junior to be in the late 50s is what Harley Benton is delivering today. Buy it!

HB DC jr.

Needed some small adjustments to perfect the intonation.

But then this is a really great guitar.