Harley Benton HB JA-60SB Vintage Series 4-stars Reviews

HARLEY BENTON JA60

A Jazzmaster style guitar...without the clunky trem! And all the better for it! 😊 These are GREAT GUITARS 🎸 👏 👌 🙌 I've had about 4 up until now, and all have been exceptional. They are surprisingly versatile, and have real resonance and attitude. QC was faultless. I would buy another in a heartbeat.

bang for the buck

quality instrument for the price, im really liking the p90s even tho they arent the most expensive kinda, they stiill have that signature p9+ sound.

Also this is the only guitar where is actually prefer mid position of pick up selector, intonation is not perfect up the neck but for the price i dont mind higher frets being slightly out of tune. would recomend this instrument for anyone who wants to get into p90s for a low price. Get on of these cooller color variants tho that have now. tuners are not greatest but guitar still holds in tune fine. and shorter scale lenght is cool to have on at least few guitars that you own. just cant go wrong with this price point.

Very pleased

Just received my HB JA 60 SB what a great guitar..and I've been playing since 1968... I am so pleased I just ordered A HB P bass vt series can't wait.

A Mixed Bag of Pros and Cons

SOUND: The guitar's tone is amazing. Sounds just as good as the $1k+ Fender Jazzmasters.

QUALITY: Here's where I have an issue. The parts themselves are all good quality, but I'm unable to intonate the 6, 5, and 4 strings (E,A,D). Even with the bridge saddles all the way in (toward the neck) those strings are not intonated at the 12th fret. The only explanation is that the actual bridge position is to far toward the tail of the guitar. It's only a centimeter (if that) of difference, but when it comes to intonation, it makes all the difference.

SUMMARY: I understand that these guitars are at a beginner price point, but they truth is that they are better than that. My TE-52 set my expectations high after it ran circles around my Fender Tele. I'm a gigging musician so intonation matters to me.

I will continue to buy HB guitars, because I think they art an absolute steal for the price, but I want to be honest in this review about my experience.

My hope if that Harley Benton will step up their QC a tiny bit to account for these types of mistakes. Without this bridge issue, I would have literally nothing wrong to say about this guitar.

Great guitar for the price as all reviews state. My only problem is, and it's a personal thing, the tune-o-matic bridge with the 25.5 scale gives a quite a bit of string tension. I find it difficult bending strings. That does give a bit of punch to the sound but feel the tune-o-matic system is better suited to shorter scale Gibson style guitars.

Excellent JA style guitar

All opinions subjective and based on my limited playing ability.

Cosmetics excellent, no blemishes to speak of.

Tuners work, they're not amazing but they do fine.

Nice fat P90 tones.

Frets are finished ok, they need a polish and protrude slightly- not sharp but definitely 'present'.

Great Purchase

I use this guitar playing in my country band. It really hits that Chris Stapleton vibe. The only downside would be the machine heads, but that is completely acceptable for this price point.

Nice and do-the-job

This jaguar / jazzmaster family guitar does the job with less buttons and the P-90 pickups. I use it for the blues.

Pros: price, sound, playability, visual.

Cons: maximum .11 strings (trying .12 damaged low E tuning pegs). And the color tone in the neck and hand is a little orange (could be lighter).

Fantastic Guitar for the price!

Good Hardware, Stays in tune, and a Good tone!

Incredible value, but not perfect as it needed some work

This is a beautiful guitar. The pick guard seems to be a bit polarizing but I think it fits the vintage vibe. Finish on this one is near perfect. I love the sunburst finish and off-white neck binding, pitch covers and controls. The only blemish I have found is a bit of bubbling in the chrome finish on one of the tuning heads. More on those later. Playability out of the box was just ok. It needed to be setup, truss rod and intonation adjusted and have the action lowered. The frets, although having the ends finished quite well and being very well leveled,, were a bit rough and needed a mild polishing. The strings were in pretty good shape but since I had to have the whole thing apart for set up work, I put some new 9?s on it. Now it plays really well. Comfortable neck feels very similar to a vintage spec?d stratocaster. The tuners are passable. They keep it in tune, but feel a bit skippy and one is quite stiff feeling. As far as sound goes, these Roswell p-90s are very hot. Very different from real Jazzmaster pickups. They?re not bad sounding pickups, but I?ve noticed that they sound too similar to each other. I?m not sure if these pickups are a matching set with dedicated neck and bridge specs or if they?re identical to each other. I?m guessing the later. The tone pot doesn?t seem to be very usable. Nothing happens until you get down to around 3, and then it?s just all dark down to 1. This might as well have been a switch...

I have however found a couple very usable and great tones out of this. The pickups lend themselves out to do both clean and dirty very well. Over all I?m very impressed by this guitar. Be prepared to do a little work on these guitars, so it might not be the best for a complete beginner, however for only around $150, it could be a great guitar to get your hands dirty with and learn about setups, mods etc.

great value for very little money

My 4th HB in 2 months and this stands up well to the standards set by the previous three ,,,,although the headstock and tuners have a noticeably budget look and feel.

Having said that, the body finish is flawless except for a tiny cracks in both back corners of the neck pocket, suggesting the neck fit is a little too tight. I have no problems with the appearance of the scratchplate which others have objected to.

The neck itself is chunky but certainly not excessively so,( and I have small hands)......I had to bed down one fret with a tack hammer and dress one other, and redress the nut slots to get the string height correct at the nut ( which is made of a very, very soft plastic suggesting problems from string wear over time.)

The Roswell pickups sound good and controls work smoothly and well. No noisier than any other P90's I've encountered.

Overall a good guitar at this price point...?..I can't award 5 stars because of the work required to the neck which was easy for me to correct but could have seen a less experienced buyer returning the guitar or paying a luthier to set up.

My new surf guitar

Lately, I've been digging some gnarly surf guitar classics. Pipeline, malaguena, etc. The ja-60 sb fills the bill, save one thing. First though, fantastic looks, the finish looks so good it has thwarted my desire to relic it, maybe temporarily. It is very playable, stays in tune, sounds good, but not as good as my Squire vintage modified tele, which also has 2 p-90 pups. The one thing that is missing, for surf music, is a vibrato, which I will add. The neck is good, looks killer, I have gone over fret ends with a file, but that is common practice. All in all, a great value for the money! I do not regret making the purchase.

Another winer

I bought this guitar because I wanted one with P90 pickups. This is a very cool looking guitar with very good paint job and finish.

Weight wise it is light and well balanced. The tuners are replicas from the vintage ones and work perfectly with a good feel.

The strong point of this guitar is the sound. Those P90 sound great and are exactly what I was hoping and, as good as the sound you get from guitars that cost several times this much.

For me, the tortoise effect of the pickguard looks a little ?fake?, but it may not bother you and is purely aesthetic.

Out of the box, the setup was good, with a nice low action and perfect intonation.

Although the neck feels very good, without sharp fret edges, it had some solvable issues. Out of the box, it looked dry and had some glue residue, especially on higher frets. The frets needed some polish and some of them were not perfectly leveled. Those issues can be easily fixed or if you are not comfortable doing it yourself, a guitar tech will do it easily (choose your guitar tech wisely). If you are not as picky, as me, those issues may not bother you at all.

After taking care of the neck, I shielded the cavities, put some roller string trees and a new nut (BlackTusq), this guitar became perfect for what I intended. Great sound and perfect playability.

Every guitar I own, even much pricier and from top brands needed those mods and a setup to bring up their full potential.

There?s no guitar with similar characteristics in this price range. This is a must buy.

Excellent quality for the money but...

The HB JA-60SB is a very nice guitar for the money. However, the one I received had tarnished frets and the beginning of fret oxidation. The strings looked old and oxidized. This means the guitar was sitting in inventory for a long time. All this can be corrected with a fret polish and new strings. However, the biggest issue I had with the guitar was the fret leveling. Starting at the 4th fret virtually all of the frets across the neck required some degree of filing and re-crowning. This was surprising since the HB-35, TE-20, TE-90 and HB 12 string electric I bought required little to no fret work (bravo!). Since I know how to do this work I was able to get the guitar where it should have been the begin with. But beware... fret work can be costly if you need to send off to a repair shop. The Wilkinson P90 pickups are fabulous.