Harley Benton HB JA-60 OW 5-stars Reviews

Better than I expected

The JA-60 is my fourth Harley Benton guitar and maybe the best of them - and that's saying a lot. Excellent fit, finish and playability. The Roswell P-90 pickups are very open and responsive with a nice midrange growl. This guitar does a great job of filling the gap between a single coil twanger and a humbucking screamer. Love it!

A Robert Smith Dream

This guitar is light, easy to play, and sounds like a dream (well, for the most part). The pickups make it sound somewhere a Gretsch and Strat with a jangly quality typically delivered by a Tele. Very nice guitar. For all of you Cure/Smiths/Echo and the Bunnymen fans (especially Cure), this guitar produces that PERFECT 80s sound. Also great for generating that noisy My Bloody Valentine sonic dissonant blur (also good for Blur songs, by the way).

The minus? Well, there's a buzz that might drive you crazy. But that's the Jazzmaster for you: they're inherently "buzzy." But, if you don't care too much, then this Alternative Axe is a good buy.

Enjoy. It's worth the price!

Very pleasant surprise

I was alittle nervous about buying an off brand guitar I can't play first, from a web site. I'm glad I did. I love this guitar. It has a couple of cons. The tuners are serviceable, but not as smooth as I like, and the pickguard color is not very eye-pleasing to me. The body color and the fretboard color make up for it though. The packing for shipment is maybe alittle weak, the pickup switch on mine got destroyed in shipping. I replaced it, no big deal. Now the pro's. The neck on this guitar is well above it's price range. Narrow nut, thin 'C' shape, no sharp fret ends, no high frets, and the nut slots are perfect. With the sixth string fretted at the second fret, there is maybe a nanometer between the string and the first fret. The neck is almost, but not quite flat, and no buzz anywhere. The neck was like this out of the box. I have never played this type of pickups before, but these sound pretty good thru my Katana Mini practice amp, and plugged straight into my 20 watt tube combo, they sound beautiful. All in all, yes, for a lot more money, you can buy a better guitar, but this guitar is a high value for the price, and they very much got the important parts right. I'll be playing it for years.

My New Favorite

I'm just an at home player, and still a beginner at that! I can say with certainty that I love this guitar.

This was the first Harley Benton I ordered (along with an SC-450 Plus) and to be honest I was anticipating the arrival of the SC-450 more. While I haven't played the SC-450 yet (it was broken on arrival and the replacement should be arriving any day now), I have fallen in love with this beautiful looking and sounding guitar. The guitar is immaculate to look at, the fit and finish blow away my Squire Strat, and played beautiful right out of the box. I didn't even change the strings. The pickups have a lovely bite to them, with the warmth and sustain of humbuckers and the clarity and brightness of single coils. The tuners are smooth and hold very well with only minor tuning needed occasionally, despite the stock strings. I haven't even put graphite in the nut slots yet. Every time I go to play I find myself grabbing the JA-60, despite having 6 other guitars to chose from. I'm waiting on the arrival of 3 more HB's and if they are even close to as good as this one, even more will follow!

Great guitar for the price.

Guitar sounds fantastic, and plays great.

Only thing I needed to do was clean up the fret work a bit. Filed and rounded the fret ends. They were a little rough. Still, about 45 minutes worth of work took this from a good guitar to great.

If you want to get in to modding guitars, this is a great, inexpensive base to start from.

So glad I purchased this.

I bought this because of the look and Im so glad I did it has exceeded all My expectations, the Neck is 'Chunky' and reminds Me of the Necks from the 60s and is so comfortable to play. The Pickups sound superb, being a new Guitar it needed some 'TLC' but that's half the fun of a new Guitar. I have quite a collection of Guitars including 'Top Brands' and to be honest for all round playability this is by far My favourite.

Harley Benton HB JA-60 OW

I use this guitar for playing at home. I am a hobbyist guitarist and don't play in a band. However, I would use this guitar in any band or live event and be very proud that I own it. I cannot tell you how impressive this guitar is for the price. I feel like I should buy every single HB guitar I can before the price jumps. Unbelievable value!

Pros: I live in Midwest USA and it is winter here currently. This guitar was shipped through the winter weather and was more than likely warm and cold many times during this process. The guitar was almost completely in tune and the setup was very very close. I didn't have to adjust the neck at all. The finish on the guitar is perfect, the neck is beautiful and all the hardware has a great finish and no corrosion on the crome.

Cons: I love to work on guitars and I was planning to completey take the guitar apart upon delivery. I would say for a beginner this guitar would be great to play out of the box but there is a little work that needs to be done. The frets needed a polish and the intonation was a little off. I also needed to re-solder a connection on the tone pot. One typical comment is that the tuners are cheat on these guitar. I would say they are a little cheat but if you work with them they will improve. No you cannot do too much adjustment with a vintage style tuner but readjusting the screws did actually help. I will be adding shielding to the cavities so that will help one the noise.

Overall look at the price. You should be paying at least 500 for these guitars. I would be very happy with this guitar if it cost more than it does. I would still feel like I got a great value. But 138 come on that is crazy for this guitar! Get one and have fun, I am going to get a burst one just because of the price and amazing value I have now seen in person.

HB JA-60 OW very pleased

Second HB and very happy. No defect or problem. I changed the strings to my preferred extra lights and it plays great. Action and intonation were good. I love the sound of these pickups. Neck is kind of fat, same as the CST-24 HB, which I like. Love the bound neck and inlays. I've been playing 38 years and have owned about 40 guitars. Can't beat HB for the value. Ordered a 3rd HB yesterday.

I needed the iconic asymmetric 1960's look and the P90 sound for classic rock, and I chose this over the F-branded stuff purely based on the price point. I was prepared to put in the extra work I suspected a guitar of this value would need, but frankly, even straight out of the box it was a perfectly decent instrument, well balanced, nicely finished, properly set up, and with that old school tone I was looking for. Including the single coil hum of course. Definitely awesome value for money.

Even though straight out of the box the guitar was totally alright, I of course had a go at upgrading it. I took it to pieces, I shielded the cavity, I leveled, profiled and polished the frets and filed away any sharp ends (of which there were very few), then I added a treble bleed to the volume pot (Harley Benton 220pF capacitor), and as I always do with Harley Benton stock tune-o-matic style bridges, I replaced the factory one with a Gotoh GE103B-N. A thick lemon oil wash for the fretboard, a blob of Loctite thread locker on the strap button screws, and that was it.

Now I have the ultimate vintage looking hard tail Jazz Master sort of axe in my arsenal, and it truly plays like a charm. Much better I should say than some of my similarly upgraded "Sq###r by F#nd#r" guitars. If it had humbuckers and a longer fretboard, it could even do the occasional stint into metal territory: The neck, while not very thin, is still fast and comfy, and the cutaway would easily give access to another 3 frets if there weren't just 21 of them. Great piece of gear, very happy with it.

Great start for me

This guitar is a good starter instrument for beginners like me. I can mark really vintage look, high-quality finishing, stupendious sound on the clean tone. There are no big cons, but I can notice that pickups not ideally fixed in their holes and frets not looked freshy. But for that price range it's ok. So, I got a really cool guitar for my practice.

Rodel Trillanes

I love the soft tone of jazz master. both pick ups works mildly.

Jazzy little beast

Fantastic budget version of you know which ‘F’ guitar,and I have to say a superb little performer.Build quality is really amazing including cosmetically with the Olympic white finish,lovely neck with no sharp frets whatsoever.The Roswell pickups are really very full sounding with good depth and clarity. I can heartily recommend this instrument to anybody on a restricted budget, as I have even gigged with it !

I really like this guitar. In this new revision there are no more "salami" pickguards and now they look very good.

The only thing I didn't like was the tuners. They are not very good. They hold the tune, but do not adjust smoothly

Great Guitar Esp. for the price

Received the guitar and started playing immediately. Incredible value for the price.

Exellent instrument

This guitar is great. Playability is fantastic...whatever the price...Right out of the box it needed very little intonation adjustment. I see people complaining over the pickguard..i think there's nothing wrong with it. It's quite beautiful in my eyes. The hardware probably could be better but i see no reason to change anything for now. The whole guitar looks great. At first i thought the neck felt a bit bulky (i love thin-like feeling necks) but after using it for a few days it starts to feel quite nice..the neck feels a bit like my Duesenberg Starplayer Special....every instrument's got a different caracter anyway...i am very happy with this purchase up till now...love it. The sound's very nice too & the low price is a huge bonus! So 5 stars all the way!

Fantastic guitar for the money

Guitar sounds great and plays OK out of the box. I replaced the tuners (which weren't great) with Wilkinson's and tuning is now very stable! I also rounded off the fret ends, polished the frets and oiled the neck.

With a little work, this guitar now stands up with many of my other guitars that cost five or six times the price! Highly recommended!

Love it

Great guitar after setup.Love the chubby neck, very playable.

Solid Guitar

I rate this 5 stars based on the Cost vs Quality scale.

The body and matching headstock are perfectly finished and blemish free. The neck fits snugly in the pocket and the satin finish and flatter fingerboard profile is great for chording. Out of the box the action was low, just as I like it, free from buzz or dead spots and the intonation was nearly spot on, requiring just minor adjustment on the A and D strings. Switches all have a solid feel.

At this price some cost savings have to be made, but are manageable, hardware can be replaced at your own discretion (i.e. Tuners, nut, bridge, pots etc). The pickguard is pretty hideous, so I've used a vinyl skin to cover it (note, body shape is smaller than a JM, so JM pickguards will not fit based on my measurements). I'll also replace the strap holders as they seem to small to be reliable.

The only cons: A couple of tuner ferrules aren't sitting flat on the neck, tuners however are performing fine, the screwpoints on the pickguard are extremely close to the pickguard edge in some spots which detracts from the visual appeal a little.

The Roswell JM pickups are fine, but can be replaced to suit your own flavour and budget.

It's hard guitar to beat at this price point for a solid JM style copy. I purchased this and the DC-Custom White at the same time and find this guitar Superior to the other in finish and construction.

P90?s

The P90?s are doing a nice job!

This guitar plays and sounds great for the very low price.

I only can recommended this guitar!

Super finishing!

Light weight

Ja 60 ow

Only 2 small gripes, rusty strings? With a didario tag in the box,I'm a little surprised.and the frets are not polished,which u only really notice when bending strings.set up was nice out of the box,well intonated, descent enough string height.the pick ups are really nice,mine has roswells.which sound good relatively clean ,with a light touch but sure have some bite when you dig in . nice paint job,no hlemishes at all.shame about the pick guard.. in all good value.