Harley Benton HB JA-60 OW 4-stars Reviews

Get offset!

Fun guitar... not entirely sure if the pickups are styled more after a jazzmaster or p90, but this is an excellent entry level Jazzmaster/offset style guitar

Harley Benton HB JA-60 OW

Nice clean build. No issues to be had. Would love different pick guard options if I had to say what I didn't like.

Love it

Happy with this one, love the soap bar pickups

a great instrument

I was sceptical, but am a believer now. I was very happy to get this guitar in my hands. After reading several reviews while looking for a guitar, I went with this one and am pleasantly surprised at the incredible value. Highly Recommended, you won't be disappointed at this price point.

Great guitar

Great buy for a modding platform. Good and solid feeling. Plays awesome. Neck feels really solid in hand. Stock pickups are decent but I swapped them for some Lollars. Was missing a side marking dot on arrival. There is some binding bleed on the neck by the body. Also some weird kinda clear coast in the same spot. Overall worth it but could've been better.

One hellofa guitar..

I was looking for a good P90 option a couple of years back, because at the time I had really never tried a guitar with such pickups. And the quality and price amze me to this day. I upgraded the tuners (to Harley Benton Parts Locking Tuners 6L Black) and sanded the neck a little to make it smoother and faster. At arrival I polished fretends and had to level a couple of frets. No problems after this.

1. Quality is great. Perfect, fast neck that fit my hands like gloves. Stable - always in tune, even with rough playing.

2. Sounds are great, with balaced pickups. Tone pots also great with wide response making the guitar being more tham good.

Have owned this 2+ years now and I play this more than good guitars that cost a lot more. What HB guitars have teached me is that "cheap" doesnt always mean worse or not playable as affordable guitars 10+ years ago

What a true Jazzmaster should be

Awesome guitar for clean and crunchy sounds. Looks sick, sounds sick, built with decent quality. I can recommend it without any hesitations. Maybe will order some other HB instruments in visible future.

Pluses:

- Overall look. Cool vintagy painting, binding. Even pau-ferro fretboard matches guitar nicely.

- Weight of instrument and wood resonating. Even unplugged sounds loud and narly. Can assume that materials are quite good. Back of the neck without too much finishing feels great.

- Pickups. These are no ordinary P90, more like fat-wound single-coils. Sounds spanky and bright. Even unique.

- Overall built quality. Truss-rod was setup properly. Good set of strings, sounds fresh from the box.

- Price. Nuff said. 120 euros ...

Minuses:

- Very fat and narrow neck profile. Really feels like bassball bat. I'm kinda used to it, but the neck is not gonna fit for ibanezy shredders.

- Vintage tuners. Would prefer standard grover tuners. But they look cool, do the job properly.

- The last frets are not rounded properly. Maybe it's just my only guitar's issue. But it's not that bad.

- Pickup height adjustment is quite difficult. Intonation wasn't setup properly from the box, string height was quite excessive. Fretboard was quite dry, needed lemon oil. But these issues are not fatal, but quite fixable.

Beat expectations

The playability and sound of this guitar is great. I love how the neck feels in my hands, as well as the overall look. Roswell pickups were unknown to me but is the biggest surprise and are underrated. Would recommend to anyone at any level. I just purchase a few more HB's. Worth every penny!!

Great looking and sounding, brilliant value

Absolutely love this guitar, it plays fantastic with a lovely neck and action. It needed a little setting up to make it just right. I would recommend polishing the frets and adjusting the pickup height to suit.

Harley Benton HB JA-60 OW

This guitar is good for the price. Nice color. The neck of the guitar is straight. Frets do not scratch hands. Overall a comfortable guitar. Perfect for those who decide to start practicing and also for those who already know something. I have been playing Guitar for over 15 years. Has different guitars. I sold many guitars, but I will leave this one.

Harley Benton HB JA-60 OW

Bought this instrument for home use. I was looking for guitars of similar shape and came across this one. Overall, implemented

pretty high quality. Well colored, comfortable and straight neck. The frets are not polished, but well rolled up. The first string peg is very hard to spin. All electronics work, except for the switch (damaged during transportation or was like that). P-90 type pickups give a peculiar sound of the instrument. I changed the strings right away. I really like to hold this guitar in my hands and play it, despite the small flaws.

Beautiful guitar

Very beautiful guitar, high quality painted, cream color, slightly darker than in the photographs. The frets do not stick out, the neck is even, the strings are about 1.5 mm at the 12th fret of the 6th string and 1.1mm at the 1st string. Of the shortcomings, some strings ring, even open ones, I hope this can be fixed) The sound is not as clear as I expected, but I think there is a problem with the settings of the combo, I play Orange Crush 12

I use google translate, sorry for mistakes :)

Surprising. Unbelievably good overall quality for the price.

Pros:

+ It came reasonably well set up.

I only had to raise the action a little bit and intonate one string.

After that, the intonation was perfect.

+ It feels good.

+ It sounds very nice.

+ The finish looks amazing. The neck is beautiful. It looks like roasted maple. Both the neck and the bound Pau Ferro fretboard look amazing. The grains are beautiful. Everything looks perfect.

Cons:

- There are a few of tiny specks on the neck. Virtually invisible and barely felt but they are there. Some light sanding will probably fix that.

- The frets are a bit scratchy. They need either a polish or enough playing to smooth it out.

- The electromechanical components feel like they are not "worn in". The switch and the jack are too tight, and the pots are a bit scratchy. I hope they will feel better after some use.

- Pickup height adjustment screws are too tight. Like they are too big for the holes.

Great quality, great sound, great value!

Excellent guitar for the money, excellent neck and full sounding P90s.

Iconic looks and sounds on a budget

My second JA60 which I like almost as much as the first, the only real difference being the considerable extra weight of this OW one compared to the SB.version

Although the pickups are described on Roswells site as jazzmaster size single coils they sound (and buzz) like P90s fitted to the SB model.

I also sense (as opposed to measure) that the neck feels even chunkier than the SB version but still is totally playable.(although I do not enjoy the 350mm f/board radius which is compounded by the fact that the T-o-M style bridge has a 12 " (305mm) profile to the saddles.)

As with all the HBs I've purchased the nut slots needed dressing to reduce string height at that end of the f/board but the frets did not require any attention other than a polish and some filing to fret ends.

The finish is very creditable given the cost of this guitar, and electrics all function well. The machine heads however are poor, particularly the ferrules which appear to be plastic and not a tight fit in the headstock holes which is a formula for tuning problems.

I have used this and its sister /brother SB version for gigging and recording with no problems.

All in all remarkable value for money for a very playable ,good sounding instrument.

Bargain!

Gorgeous guitar for the money, however the frets are crazily sharp, my hand was cut within minutes of me getting the guitar out of the box. Not a huge issue though, it's easily fixed.

Looks good, sounds good, for the price I'd certainly recommend this.

A new and exciting guitar! I was really overhyped a bit about this piece. It arrived quickly and was somewhat in tune... I will only blame the cold weather, no harm. It wasn't exactly clean. But not at all dirty. Some glue here and there, minor stuff that was cleaned without a problem.

The hardware is nice. It works. It feels nicer than Squier Bullet series, which is comparable price-wise. The knobs felt a bit stiff in the beginning, but they have loosened. Tuners do tune. They are not the nicest, but get the job done.

I like to play the guitar. The matte neck feels good and flat fretboard is nice. Frets themselves aren't the most polished (as many have pointed out before me) but I haven't had any issue with bending notes all over the fretboard. The only thing I might dislike a bit is the position of the guitar hanging. it's a bit too on right side. But I can work with that.

Oh, and the sound. Well, honestly, this is where my expectations have failed. The guitar sounds... Well, it sounds like a guitar. Nothing too exciting. So I am planning now on changing the pickups for splitting humbuckers. The original pickups do hum quite a lot if I might say.

The conclusion? This is a very good inexpensive piece of wood that would satisfy beginners, hobbyists and pros. Everybody. You can tweak it to your liking without risking big money.