Harley Benton DC-Custom Cherry

243 Customer ratings

4.6 / 5

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190 Reviews

Harley Benton DC-Custom Cherry
£215
All prices incl. VAT
In stock
In stock

This product is in stock and can be shipped immediately.

Standard Delivery Times
Delivery free of charge expected between Wednesday, 3.04. and Thursday, 4.04.
1
TF
A Monster Quality Guitar
The Fees 17.11.2020
There isn't anything about this guitar that I don't like. It just feels right from the moment you pick it up to the feeling you get playing it, and the reverence you give it putting it away in the case. I know that sound flowery, but every word of it is true.
You hear people get critical of it because of the neck dive. This is a pet peeve of mine when Gibson made incredibly heavy guitar bodies, no neck dive there, and then they tried to lighten them up by making the body thinner, only to be met with jeers saying they were cheapening up the guitars.
So along comes a solid mahogany body that is so light you could play with it all night and experience zero fatigue, and on top of that they give you a neck with 24 frets, yes, two whole scales so you can hit that high E in your solos. So, what does that give you, but a long neck that is thin enough for playing ease, and a body you can gig with easily; it's perfect.
Then the pickups are the LAF's which are fashioned after the Gibson PAF series which have incredible warm tones for clean settings, and yet give you enough of a bite for distortion. If you want to go heavier metal then an HAF pickup guitar is the one for you. My CST-24T is a dream with the HAF's which by the very nature of high gain pickups they are going to be darker for the clean tones, but really make a pedal explode. Then in the wisdom of Harley Benton guitars they give you the coil split, which cleans them up wonderfully. Okay back to the DC Custom cherry.
I noticed by opening the back-access cover that there are two of the four conductor wires joined together so they are ready to be split coils. (At least the one I received in late 2020 had them) So if you want to add a mini switch, or a push pull pot you can easily have that option as well. The LAF; s sound perfect to me. That last thing I would do is consider a pickup swap.
One thing that really deserves special mention is the way this guitar stays so well in tune. It is not uncommon to open the case and find the guitar is still in tune.
Here is an observation I made in the way HB cuts the nut. They still have the thick nut but only create a trough on just the beginning of the nut. The trailing edge of the nut overall slopes downwards strongly, and what that does is create a situation in that the trailing edge of the nut never touches the string. It's an ingenious way of eliminating the nut bind typical of Gibson guitars due to the sharp edge of the nut as the string leaves the back side that binds when doing string bends. The same system is on my 450SC GT P90 and it stays incredibly well in tune. (Yes, even the G string) Why didn't Gibson think of these things?
I guess this is getting lengthy so I should wrap it up. A couple things worth mentioning is the beauty of the solid mahogany body and neck; the grain is incredible. The thin fast neck that makes playing with ease a constant. The little tapers on the edges of the body adding all the more to the comfort, and the number one thing is the action. It sits closes to the frets without any buzz. The tuners that are on their work fine, no need to swap them out either. I find a lot of people think because of the low price that they are going to need to do a lot of upgrades; it just isn't so. Don't go buying any gear to do upgrades. Play the guitar first, you will be shocked at the level of quality for this kind of money it's nuts. I'm on my 8th HB guitar now with my new order. What Harley Benton has done is give the vast majority of us a model and style of guitar that we wouldn't normally be able to afford. So, I went nuts rounding out my collection with styles that I gave up dreaming of, and now have. It's like a kid in a candy shop. I'll take one of those, and one of those, and ah yes, two of those. Highly recommended. Love Harley Benton guitars.
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GV
Double-Cut Excellence
Gus Viera 01.05.2020
I am once again stunned at the quality achieved in the Harley Benton line. I just received my Harley Benton DC-Custom Cherry and it outclasses all other SG-style guitars I have seen.

Grover tuners, graphite nut, neck volute, jatoba fretboard that almost looks flamed (beautiful), bound neck and headstock, polished smooth frets that have been attended to all the way to the 24th fret (no slice and dice fret ends) and a beautiful finish. Absolutely no stain bleedover on the bindings. Nut cut to correct depth. Even the neck relief measures just right. Action height is low and fast. This is the attention Thomann pays to every guitar they send out. A big surprise was the nashville style bridge. Beautiful and works very well.
The Roswell bridge pickup barks out tone and the neck is full voiced with a fat tone and bottom end. You can read all the specks online, but the bottom line is, this really is a rock machine.

I am very pleased, but not surprised. This is my fifth Harley Benton and not one of them has disappointed me. Friends that have spent more on one guitar than I have spent on all of mine are still blown away every time they pick one of my guitars up. Best of all, I can order any guitar that Thomann offers (HB or not) and know that Thomann looks after me even after the sail. Their warranty is world class. It has to be when you are buying a guitar from 6 time zones away, and they know it.
Quality guitar, combined with quality customer service. I couldn't ask for more. Many thanks, Thomann.
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Q
A very nice SG!
Quintijn 28.05.2022
Amazing sound and playability after a little set up! The finish, pick ups tuners and bridge etc are perfectly fine! The only downside was that the guitar I received had a little rough fretboard binding that needed some serious cleaning and polishing.

Just a little head's up for those looking to buy the guitar: The guitar has the skinniest neck I've ever felt on a guitar. I've tried multiple models and it seems like they've all got the same extreme curvature to the neck. It's almost like there's not enough meat on the neck to support the string tension. So whereas you would usually aim for a certain amount of relief in the middle of the neck, I would find that you'd get way more relief on other places on the neck as well, making a low action nearly impossible to achieve.
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JR
Super impressed
Jonny Reckless 27.06.2022
I was very pleasantly surprised when this guitar arrived. Out of the box, the setup was almost perfect. I just tweaked the truss rod 1/8 of a turn and lowered the action by 1mm and now it is fabulous. It is so easy to play, and sounds great. Even the coil tap is useful, especially on the neck pickup to get a sweet lead tone.

Fit and finish are above what you would expect for a guitar at this price point. Mine was immaculate out of the box.

I actually prefer the single tone / volume knobs and location of the output jack to that on my "real" SG. It's less cluttered, and the cable can be wrapped around your strap more easily. Like all SGs there is a bit of neck dive, but the placement of the strap peg helps that a lot.

If you are thinking of buying an Epiphone SG I would highly recommend this guitar instead. In terms of playability it's actually up there with my 1970s Gibson. Very nice!
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SC
SG Custom
SG Custom Rocks 23.11.2021
I own a lot of guitars and I bought this out of curiosity and also wanted an SG model guitar.
Have to say I am totally impressed and will probably buy another soon👍
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M
Pretty good
Mr_T.S. 22.10.2022
Ordered this after spending 6 years on a 100 euro HSS strat from a unknown brand, as my first upgrade.
Wanted something with two humbuckers and 24 frets.

Out of the box, the guitar looks great. minor cosmetic flaws are a small chip-like thing right on the end of the binding on the corner, right after the end of the 24th fret, and some glue visible under the nut.
Build-wise, some screws on the pickguard and the screw that is on the truss rod are drilled at an angle. Again, only visual imperfections, doesn't affect playability.

Tuners and tuning stability after changing strings (the ones shipped were nothing special, I don' t think they were D'addario since they weren't mentioned in the product description. They were really thick, they might have been .11s, I now put on .09s since the guitar will be my E standard axe) are perfect, responsive and smooth, keeping it in tune nicely.

IMPORTANT, the guitar WILL neckdive if you have it on a regular nylon strap, but thankfully with my order I ordered a basic HB leather strap, and with it's raw leather inner layer it stays perfectly in place, so definetely buy a leather strap too if you don't have one.

Sound is great through my Katana 100 mkI, can play all the classic rock and bluesy stuff like Led Zep but can also dabble in playing some metal, as long as its not some ultra modern stuff like metalcore etc

NOW, the only giant flaw this guitar had was that, after a day of playing, the pickups (mostly the neck but it also affected the bridge a couple of times) and pickup selector suddenly decided they were not going to function. Actually, when you selected the neck pickup for example, it would be barely heard. Not completely off, just very very very quiet. And that is with my amps gain at max. The other one would be perfectly fine though. If I played with the selector a little, sometimes it would get fixed for a while, but then it would go quiet again. After two weeks, and not wanting to bother with returning it because it was perfect already, I brought it to my old guitar teacher who has a soldering iron. He didn't find any wires loose, everything was in place it seemed. With nothing else to do, he de-soldered and then re-soldered every single wire back, and that fixed it. The term he used was, literally translated from Greek, "it was probably a cold solder that caused it". I have no idea what the correct term is in english, that is what he said.

With new .09 gauge strings and a proper setup from my teacher, the action is now very low and very comfortable to play, no buzzing. With the old thick strings and the subpar setup job I gave it out of the box, I couldn't get it to stop buzzing on frets 0-5. Maybe it had to do with the strings, maybe it just needed a more experienced hand to do the adjustments, who knows.
Also, another remark from my teacher is that the nut is very high, ie it needs sanding. I don't want to bother with that right now though, the action is perfectly fine for now.

As a closing statement, coil split would be an excellent feature to add on this guitar, and definitely something I will do in the future, as the pickups sound great already, can't wait to hear how they sound split too.

tl;dr great guitar, just get it setup correctly, either by yourself or someone who knows what they're doing, and I hope you don't get a lemon in the wiring department like I did.
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T
Better than anything twice the price by far.
Tomdameek 25.04.2018
Straight up you will not find a better guitar anywhere for this price. In fact it?s worth so much more. The guitar came excellently set up. There was no flaws and the action was beautifully low with perfect intonation. I adore the finish, it?s got that ahh factor when I open up the case. The Roswell pickups are perfect for rock and blues and I can get a great Ac/Dc sound out of it. An extra pleasant surprise was the smooth quality of the tuners. They feel the same as my top of the range Takemime acoustic. All round it?s a great solid guitar and My second Harley Benton. As usual delivery was prompt and in perfect condition. Thanks Thomann you never let me down.

I can?t think of any cons it?s got no blemishes. If I want to be picky the fret dot markers are a bit off center but I think that?s on purpose as my HB 35 plus is the same. The neck is a bit heavy but I?ve played the real thing before and that was the same.
So to sum up, get it you won?t be disappointed.
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TK
Amazing !
The Kenny Crow 23.08.2022
I have been looking at this guitar for a long time. I have read every review. So I purchased one. The guitar arrived in 4 days ! It was packed in a guitar box and then another box around that. The guitar is perfect ! Not a scratch or blemish. I bought it primarily to use for a open tuning slide guitar. Plugged in to a Peavey Classic 30 , made a few adjustments and got that Duane Allman like tone I have been looking for. I made a few adjustments on the bridge and wow !! I am impressed. Over all , for the price, I got an amazing guitar ! Thanks Thomann and Harley Benton !! Very Satisfied customer !!
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k
Awesome sound and quality!
kennedym 30.11.2021
I just recently purchased this guitar. It took a while for it to become "immediately" available, but it was worth the wait. Not only is the guitar absolutely stunningly beautiful, but it plays like a dream and sounds so sweet!
The guitar was set-up very well, but I made some fine tuning adjustments for my particular playing abilities and style. I lowered the action and adjusted the truss rod to 2 64ths of an inch at the 6th fret with a capo on the first. This adjustment seemed to work fine and allowed for buzz free playing with a pretty low action. I polished the frets and plugged this bad boy into my Spark Amp and WOW! It sounds so nice. I really can't see why someone would pay the money for a Gibson SG when they can purchase this guitar at its price. Thank You again Thomann! You Rock!
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AS
Nice looking guitar with a dull sound
A Saint 06.07.2023
First, the good part - I love the looks, and it's made fairly well. No fret sprouts, the binding is decent, and the action is low. The only quality issue was that the bridge was not properly grounded (the wire was just hanging in the cavity unattached), so I had to fix it myself, which wasn't too hard.

Features-wise, I'd like to have coil split push-pull. I think the recent versions already have it, though mine didn't.

Now the complaints. It's the sound. Compared to all my other guitars, this one sounded dull, dark, flat, and uninspiring. Because I liked it otherwise, I tried changing the pups: tried various humbuckers and even a set of Phat Cats (which sounded fantastic on my Epiphone Les Paul) - nothing helped. I managed to get out of it more or less decent high-gain metal tones, but it could not do anything else properly.
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Harley Benton DC-Custom Cherry