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.