Harley Benton SC-Junior Vintage Sunburst

I bought this guitar because I wanted a 2nd sc junior. I have a 2005 Gibson Les Paul jr too and this guitar is really not far from the original. For the price I will say that this Harley Benton is absolutely 5 stars, but compared to the original I think I have to drop it to a 4. Out of the 2 I find Harley Benton is by far the best value for money.

This guitar looked just fantastic when I unboxed it. I checked it and could not find any imperfections at all. The finish is perfect.
It also came really well set up straight out of the box. I prefer my strings really low so I decided to lower them a bit anyway. The tuners of this guitar feels very cheap, but the guitar stays in tune so there is really nothing to complain about. I wish this guitar had a heavier bridge and I really don't like how the intonation adjustments rubs/cuts my hands when I palm mute. Both tuners and bridge can be changed without much work or cost so I do not see it as a problem.

This review of the Harley Benton SC Jr will be a comparison to my Gibson and I give you my honest opinion on what I found to be the major differences.

Quality: I do not find the huge differences in the wood and build of the guitars. The harley Benton has better access to the higher frets because of it's angeled neckjoint. The Gibson has got higher quality on the electrics and hardware, but all of that is easy to change and upgrade.

Playability: The Gibson got a satin nitro finish while the Harley Benton has got high gloss polyurethane. I prefer satin necks so I just rubbed the HB neck with a scrub sponge and suddenly I find them quite similar to play. The HB is slightly ligher than the Gibson, but there is not much difference. I have to say that I really can't put one in front of the other when it comes to playability so I will call it a tie.

Sound: This is where I think you can find the biggest differences between the 2. The Gibson has a warmer tone. Gibson also have more note separation and a clearer sound when strummed. The Harley Benton sounds a bit sharper and tend to sound a bit messy when strummed. All of this has got to do with electrics of the guitar, so it's easy to upgrade and improve.


To wrap it up I will say that the Harley Benton SC Junior is an amazing guitar for the money. I also think it's a great guitar to upgrade and improve. The fact that it's got 1 pickup also makes it easier if you are a beginner on upgrading electrics.

I will really recommend this guitar to everyone who consider a one pickup single cut. I would buy again for sure, and to be honest I consider buying the Harley Benton DC Junior as well.

Update after starting upgrades of the guitar electrics:
After playing this guitar for lots of hours I decided that this is a really good platform for upgrading. I just want to tell that during this process I found that the pots must have been switched. The B pot was for volume and the A pot for tone. I have never heard of any guitar who got wired this way before, and I hope it is just a mistake happened during production.

I swapped the pots for CTS 500K and decided to put an alnico 2 p90 pickup in it. The tone got warmer and less agressive, something that fits my playing well. I also wired it like the 50's Les Paul Jr, and now I suddenly have my dream guitar.

Color under warm lamp light as in the stock photo, in daylight, the sunburst center is yellow-green.
The painting was done perfectly, the sunburst was applied carefully, the hand didn’t flinch anywhere, it was well polished.
Smudges, orange peels are not found.
Great weight, 2.9 kg is just a fairy tale.
The perfect balance.
Wood, declared as mahogany, I believe, I rummaged in timbral block the dark pink.
Fretboard Amaranth. If this is amaranth, then this is a very good tree, I liked it. Excellent color, after cleaning and coating with oil glistens.
The neck is round thick comfortable, like on the Les Paul 50s. Headstock is a good reinforced volute.
Frets from the box are polished, the ends are rounded.
Since the grinding paste remained on the frets and the fretboard, upon receipt it is necessary for everyone to carry out the standard procedure, polish the frets and clean the fretboard,
in order to get rid of dried plaque.

Let's go further. The timbral block, I see there was an attempt to shield with graphite, not entirely successful, but it was. The cover is shielded with foil.
Potentiometers, per tone "Alpha" at 500k logarithmic. At volume is "NoName" at 500k linear.
They also wanted to shield the “hole” under the pickup, but the brush with graphite had already dried up leaving a couple of strokes, but the tree was clearly visible.
The pickup is in perfect order, good shielded wires. 7.05 kΩ.
Pickguard is good, high-quality, three-layer.
Machine heads Wilkinson Deluxe, suitable, perfectly mow under the 50s of the last century.
 nut one to one graftech as on Gib ...
Input Jack is not plasticine, great grip.
And of course, the bridge, is the weakest point.
But in my opinion, the bridge weight is too light. It takes more time to evaluate its strength and stability,
but for some reason I am inclined to think that it is a pressed powder.
Minimally lowering the strings allows for 1.8mm sixth and 1.5mm first ( 12 frets).

So, the guitar is assembled perfectly. It sounds to me, as it should, a deep round clean and sharp on crunch, perfectly responds to the tone knob.
Playable at 100%.
Blues, punk, rock and roll.
I can recommend it.

First of all, thank you Thomann for the amazing prompt service.
This is a great guitar for not much money and represents superb value for money. Construction is faultless and the finish, a really attractive vintage 2 tone sunburst, feels much thinner and less gloopy then most poly finishes. There are two minor spots on the neck where the black paint has oversprayed on to the natural wood of the edge of the fingerboard, but this is a minor cosmetic point. The action was set too high out of the box and I had expected to have to do some fret levelling to get a low action. However, I was just able to achieve this by lowering the bridge and tweaking the intonation. The fret job on this guitar is excellent, ends perfectly flush to the fingerboard, routed and polished. Neck relief was set just right.
Apart from the slight issue with the overspray on the neck finish the only other criticism I can find is that the g string sticks slightly in the nut, but that's a 5 minute job to correct.
I've aways had a soft spot for LP and SG jr type guitars as great cut-down no nonsense rock machines. This is a great example at a knock down price. Despite the all mahogany construction it's relatively lightweight and a great guitar for us girls to play on a strap for long sets.
My most recent experience of a new brand G guitar of similar type was a LP 50s Tribute I bought 6 or 7 years ago. That instrument had some basic construction flaws that should never have passed QC while the Harley Benton is flawless in this regard. Also, despite boasting a 'plec' setup, brand G required far more work than this Harley Benton to get it into a state I considered playable - and that included a sticky nut on the g string too.
The electronics on this guitar work just fine and sound good with the single pickup barking nicely. I might decide to change the pickup for something more bespoke in time, but in the meantime the one supplied will do nicely.
I can't praise the extraordinary value for money and sheer playability of this guitar highly enough. I've barely put it down since taking it out of the box.
Most importantly of all - it's a whole load of fun to play.