Harley Benton DC-Custom Cherry

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.

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.

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.