Harley Benton DC-Junior Faded Cherry

I'd read the hype, the reviews, the forums and watched the vids and, after a lot of consideration I pulled the trigger!
I thought all the claims about perfect finish and setup were a little optimistic but no. The finish was flawless, although being a matt finish, it was a little grainy in places. Nothing big enough to be seen but I could feel the odd speck under my fingers, now mostly disappeared after a few days playing. Setup was almost spot-on, just a slight sharpness on two strings but not enough to worry about until I do a string change and the action was just right. I haven't measured it yet but it plays very nicely! I usually play 9's and this guitar comes strung with 10's, but they suit it down to the ground so I may keep them.
The Roswell P90 pickup is a revelation. There are a huge range of tones available and the sounds I'm getting from a modified Fender Champion 600 range from very sweet and clean to dark and gnarly at the turn of a knob. I haven't opened it up, either sonically or physically so I can't speak for its performance through a larger amp or comment on pot and capacitor values but they seem very well matched.
Fit and finish is exceptional for the price with a nice thick pickguard, well finished frets, good tuners and a general air of quality.
Even though this guitar is a fantastic buy I do have some gripes. There are some sharp edges on the bridge which are a bit uncomfortable when hand muting. Similarly the fretboard side of the nut can dig in to your hand during certain open chords. Both of these are small niggles which can be easily sorted though and don't really detract from what is an excellent guitar at any price.

Together with my sc450 plus this is the second (out of 4) HB to be almost perfect out of the box. Almost because as with all guitars below a certain price point, the nut needed a little lowering ...it still played fine with no sharp notes when fretting the first few frets but its just nicer to play with a little lower action at the nut....possibly personal preference. I was pleased to find that once i lowered the action i still had range left should i want to lower the bridge further, which was not the case with my SC yellow mustard that uses the same bridge. starting action was 2.1 and 1.6mm out of the box, tweaked it down to 1.8 and 1.4mm, electrics are just fine but if you want to get closer to a Leslie west mountain tone you might want to raise the pickup 2/3mm. volume control works great to alter the nature of the sound. High fret access is fantastic and surprisingly frets were really nice and polished ....even the strings had a new feel to them so left them on. I normally buff up the frets and change strings straight away but not with this guitar. Feels like this is a fairly recent manufacture and so had little shelf life. Overall, couldn't really ask for more...even at three time the price......now i'm curious about the FAT model .....

I've had this guitar sometime now so I've had time to work out the instruments pros and cons.

Service from Thomann was excellent as usual.
This is the best value for money of this style of guitar you'll find anywhere.
I like the woods used mine looks to be a three piece body and it's well matched timber, the neck joint is particularly well done having removed the pickguard just to have a look I was impressed how tidy the joint is.
I really like the satin finish and the neck which feels slightly bigger than epiphones 60s slim taper.
Tuning machines are quality Wilkinson vintage jobbies. Neck has a scarf joint and a volute so it will be strong.
The guitar is very light weight I like that and it rings like a bell unplugged, it's very loud even unplugged and I can feel the whole guitar vibrating when I strum it.
I personally really like the purple heart fretboard, it's very smooth and I love the colour, this might not be everyone's cup of tea but I like it.

Ok here's the cons although the pickup sounds great it's far too low and it needs shimming up to get closer to the strings. Roswell make a shim for this style of pickup and it should be supplied with the instrument. Once the pickup is in a better position it actually sounds very very good real vintage p90 tones.
My other con is the bridge, it's a good idea but to my eyes the radius isn't the same as the fretboard.
I'm finding that the further up the fret board I go the less sustain the instrument has I'm not sure why this is. Maybe it's just this style of guitar but I can't help but think the bridge is the culprit.
I've had an SG junior before and I can't recall having this problem.
I've given the frets a light sanding and polish and I've tried setting the instrument up at different heights but to no avail so the next step is to put an epiphone lightning bar tailpiece on it and see whether it improves things.
The nut was well cut however I like to sand mine down so the strings are just resting on the top and I got rid of the sharp edges on the corners.

All in all I'm not going to make a big deal of the problems but it would be nice if Thomann addressed the cons. I'm happy with the instrument and my experience with guitars is they all have their foibles doesn't how much you pay they are all different and I enjoy tinkering and learning about the instruments.
A less experienced player wouldn't spot the cons I've noticed.
Would I buy another? Yes I think I'd buy the Harley Benton DC60 junior if I was in the market for that style of guitar.
I'm still giving it four out of five because the timber and hardware are all very good quality and the workmanship is excellent. When you consider that Gibson's version of this guitar is £1100 this is a steal.
None of the components other than the bridge need upgrading.

I decided to buy this guitar based on excellent reviews. Based on my experience with this guitar, I think most of those reviews are biased because of the low price i.e. "it's great for the price".
I think guitars should be scored regardless of their price. In my opinion, an excellent guitar needs to have the following:
- Ability to set a really low action. That means around 1 mm on low E string and 1.5mm on high E.
- It should stay in tune
- It must sound great
- It has to have a good hardware

Looks are subjective, I won't comment that.

This guitar didn't satisfy some of those things out of the box. In particular, the nut was cut too high, making it really hard to play and impossible to set the action low. In addition, the quality of a nut wasn't great so the guitar had issues staying in tune. I fixed this by installing a high quality nut which solved the nut-side action and tuning issues.

While this improved playability significantly, I still wasn't able to get the action as low as I wanted, bends would choke and string were buzzing (with correct amount of neck relief). Guitar had quite a few high frets that had to be levelled. I could set the action really low after fret levelling.

The Roswell pickup is really great. Although a bit underwound at 7k, it sounds amazing and it gives the guitar almost a telecaster vibe with p90 growl. It sits way too low though from the strings so you'll have to buy a shim to raise it for about 3 mm. Otherwise it will sound dull and it will have a weak output.

The wrap around bridge does its job but it's somewhat uncomfortable. The saddles are a bit sharp and uncomfortable so I had to replace it. I thought it looked ugly too, but that's subjective.

When it comes to finish, I think Thomann web page is misleading. The guitar doesn't look anything like in the images on their web page. The images show a faded cherry guitar in a beautiful gloss finish, whereas the actual colour is a dull satin finish. It's not an open pore finish either as they list in the specs, so thumbs down for false advertising.

Overall, if you have luthier skills, you can make this guitar play as good as a guitar that costs much more. But if you don't, you will be underwhelmed and you have to spend quite a few $$$ on fretwork, nut replacement, pickup shims etc.

As a former LP Jr player, was pleased - and relieved after getting one of these. Put a set of my fav strings on and shimmed the pickup, then jammed it for the evening. Already added to my stage gear. Will swap out tuners for locking, but that's just a preference. Holds tune fine, sounds raw and raunchy like my old Jr. Frets smooth as glass after an evening's play - what my luthier calls the 'final polish' on a fret job. The original Jr's back in the day were $99 guitars - as they should be. The HB fills the bill nicely... period. Also great communication from the folks at Thomann. Sweet deal.

I've been pondering getting a single p90 guitar for a while, and as I'd previously bought a lot of HB guitars, this model seemed a nice choice.
Out of the box, I was blown away with its looks. The faded cherry finish on my guitar is really nice (I'm not a massive fan of glossy, slippery guitars!), the matt finish looks really nice, and gives off a vintage vibe. On a strap this guitar is well balanced and the upper fret access is exceptional. I've been a member of a few HB Facebook groups and before buying I asked for advice from buyers of the DC Junior of what I may need to upgrade, etc. A few suggestions were made (upgrading Pickup, pots, bridge etc!), after plugging in, the first thing that struck me was the clarity of the p90. It gives me some of the nicest clean tones I've ever played, then I turned up the gain, WOW! The p90 is a beast! The pickup is staying! The only niggle I had was the pickup is a bit low from the strings. I purchased a 3mm pickup shim, which goes under the pickup to bring it closer to the strings. Now it sounds exceptional. I like the design of the wraparound bridge, a great piece of design! The controls on my DC are very responsive. Don't think that a single pickup will restrict your tonal options. The p90 is nice and bright, so you can roll off the tone to around 7-8 to give a more humbucker like tone. If you roll the tone down further, you can mimic a "faux-neck pickup", which I like. If you add a lot of gain and roll the tone all off, you get a great "woman tone "! The DC comes with .010's, factory fitted, but I play .009's exclusively, so when I played it with my chosen set, I couldn't believe how easily this guitar plays.
Overall, I'm very impressed with this guitar, and I'm actually looking to get a second one with view to fitting with a humbucker.
Well done Thomann, thus is my favourite out of all my Harley Benton guitars!

What can be said about this guitar? Its an absolute steal of a guitar when you think its all mahogany, a glued-in neck, really well made, solid in the hand, not too heavy but not flimsy either. The P90 pup is OK, by no means the worst, and if its not to your tastes, change it, at this money and given the overall build quality whats to lose?? I don't know how they do it at this price? Quite how Gibson and others manage to charge people upwards of a grand for similar instruments speaks more about them than the bargain-basement pricing of Harley Benton says about this guitar. Seriously, if you want to go simple, go a bit 'punk', or slide is your thing, get one!

This is my first Harley Benton guitar. The Harley Benton DC-Junior in faded cherry. I feel certain the intonation was set perfectly when it was shipped and after travel was the slightest bit off. Corrected that and swapped out for my usual brand of strings and this is ROCK MONSTER!! The P90 single coil (highly underrated, in my opinion) is great. I'd never heard of Roswell before, but this is a great pickup. Love the vintage rock sounds I get out of this guitar. I will be buying this same guitar in the FAT version (I love the '59 style LP DC with the bigger neck) and will highly recommend Harley Benton to my friends. I had never heard of this brand before, but if your other products are on par with THIS guitar, I am one sold, loyal customer. Thanks.

It has taken me 4 weeks to set this guitar up, basically because it needed a new bridge which Thomann kindly provided. Now it’s properly intonated and the action is to my requirement, I can’t put it down. The guitar is basic, but then that’s the whole point. I wanted a minimalist instrument with nothing to distract me. It’s very playable. The neck is a nice shape for my large hands; I love the mahogany; fretwork is fine; nut is fine; tuners are adequate and I may change them when I can put the guitar down for 5 minutes. The prospect of working with a P90 didn’t appeal initially but I actually like it now, it’s crisp and yet more mellow than my strat single coils. For this price, there are absolutely no cons. A very worthy guitar that punches several leagues above its weight and therefore very highly recommended