Harley Benton JA-60 OW

Awesome guitar for clean and crunchy sounds. Looks sick, sounds sick, built with decent quality. I can recommend it without any hesitations. Maybe will order some other HB instruments in visible future.

Pluses:
- Overall look. Cool vintagy painting, binding. Even pau-ferro fretboard matches guitar nicely.
- Weight of instrument and wood resonating. Even unplugged sounds loud and narly. Can assume that materials are quite good. Back of the neck without too much finishing feels great.
- Pickups. These are no ordinary P90, more like fat-wound single-coils. Sounds spanky and bright. Even unique.
- Overall built quality. Truss-rod was setup properly. Good set of strings, sounds fresh from the box.
- Price. Nuff said. 120 euros ...
Minuses:
- Very fat and narrow neck profile. Really feels like bassball bat. I'm kinda used to it, but the neck is not gonna fit for ibanezy shredders.
- Vintage tuners. Would prefer standard grover tuners. But they look cool, do the job properly.
- The last frets are not rounded properly. Maybe it's just my only guitar's issue. But it's not that bad.
- Pickup height adjustment is quite difficult. Intonation wasn't setup properly from the box, string height was quite excessive. Fretboard was quite dry, needed lemon oil. But these issues are not fatal, but quite fixable.

First thing to say I have bought a bunch of music stuff previously on thomann including harley benton guitar cab and mustang bass, and both were awesome, but not this time

With the removing of protective film the part of the glossy layer came off the pickguard.
The fretboard was dry to the point that it cracked closer to the 17th fret.
I could assume the factory defect and no one was aware, but there are marks of glue, so someone was trying to hide it.
Stock strings are just garbage. It feels like I got a b-stock, but my purchase definitely was without any discounts.
Unfortunately, I've bought the guitar via an intermediary as thomann stopped delivering products to Ukraine since the first day of the russian invention, so it's a problem for me to send it back.

However, the playability is still OK and roswells are great pickups, so I'll keep the guitar for recording, but my goal was to buy an instrument for live gigs.

UPDATE. Fortunately, Thomann decided to send spare parts to me, so so you can rely on their service

My second JA60 which I like almost as much as the first, the only real difference being the considerable extra weight of this OW one compared to the SB.version
Although the pickups are described on Roswells site as jazzmaster size single coils they sound (and buzz) like P90s fitted to the SB model.
I also sense (as opposed to measure) that the neck feels even chunkier than the SB version but still is totally playable.(although I do not enjoy the 350mm f/board radius which is compounded by the fact that the T-o-M style bridge has a 12 " (305mm) profile to the saddles.)
As with all the HBs I've purchased the nut slots needed dressing to reduce string height at that end of the f/board but the frets did not require any attention other than a polish and some filing to fret ends.

The finish is very creditable given the cost of this guitar, and electrics all function well. The machine heads however are poor, particularly the ferrules which appear to be plastic and not a tight fit in the headstock holes which is a formula for tuning problems.
I have used this and its sister /brother SB version for gigging and recording with no problems.

All in all remarkable value for money for a very playable ,good sounding instrument.

I got this guitar only because I needed another to save on shipping for a Junior. In less than a week my guitars went from Germany to California!

However, the box the two guitars came damaged. Pretty sure it was on the shipper though since they tried to repair the box using a different tape. The JA was on the side of the damage so I did an inspection. At first I thought the volume knob was damaged so I immediately contacted them. Turns out it was just a crappy knob that made it past QA.

However, Thomann's customer service was top notch! I cannot stress enough how responsive and willing to help they were. Truly blown away. I can't wait for my next purchase.

I was looking for a good P90 option a couple of years back, because at the time I had really never tried a guitar with such pickups. And the quality and price amze me to this day. I upgraded the tuners (to Harley Benton Parts Locking Tuners 6L Black) and sanded the neck a little to make it smoother and faster. At arrival I polished fretends and had to level a couple of frets. No problems after this.

1. Quality is great. Perfect, fast neck that fit my hands like gloves. Stable - always in tune, even with rough playing.
2. Sounds are great, with balaced pickups. Tone pots also great with wide response making the guitar being more tham good.

Have owned this 2+ years now and I play this more than good guitars that cost a lot more. What HB guitars have teached me is that "cheap" doesnt always mean worse or not playable as affordable guitars 10+ years ago

Pros:
+ It came reasonably well set up.
I only had to raise the action a little bit and intonate one string.
After that, the intonation was perfect.
+ It feels good.
+ It sounds very nice.
+ The finish looks amazing. The neck is beautiful. It looks like roasted maple. Both the neck and the bound Pau Ferro fretboard look amazing. The grains are beautiful. Everything looks perfect.

Cons:
- There are a few of tiny specks on the neck. Virtually invisible and barely felt but they are there. Some light sanding will probably fix that.
- The frets are a bit scratchy. They need either a polish or enough playing to smooth it out.
- The electromechanical components feel like they are not "worn in". The switch and the jack are too tight, and the pots are a bit scratchy. I hope they will feel better after some use.
- Pickup height adjustment screws are too tight. Like they are too big for the holes.