Harley Benton JA-Baritone BK

After waiting a few months for this to arrive and frantically watching videos about it online, it finally arrived today!

I was worried about possible QC issues and/or electronic issues since rumors about HB guitars have been coming forward a bit more the last year or so (my personal experience with HB products has been only positive), however I am extremely excited to say that the neck and frets feel as smooth as my most expensive guitar, the stock pickups being house-brand sound surprisingly good.

Only minor points, if you can even call them that, are the plastic tuners (which personally do not really bother me for the price and feel sturdy enough), the glossy neck (this is personal preference and I had no issue running up and down the neck) and the fact that the fretboard does not seem to be oiled (which is a 5 minute job).

Overall, I cannot recommend this guitar enough to the baritone lover. I actually wanted it for low-tuned metal which it can absolutely do (with some extra gain and stuff) but nevertheless have caught myself being sunk into its expressive cleans, so I do think this guitar has a lot of possibilities and its p90 pickups have an interesting character. For 199 euros and these features I didn't even care to examine it for dings and scratches and so far I have seen none, plus I have not checked the intonation but this can also be easily remedied. Absolutely great instrument!

I thought this would be fun to pick up for the price, and I expected the usual with a new guitar: setup is funky, nut was cut too high to leave you room to lower, fret sprout, some uneven frets or notes to get choked out when you bend high...Pretty much the how my 2021 Epiphone Les Paul Prophecy came.

This guitar blew my expectations away! No fret sprout, no uneven frets that I can tell after a few hours on it, action is actually really good, and virtually NO cosmetic defects (one small ding about 2mm wide and 1mm tall, you really have to look for it). The neck is smooth, the frets don't stick out of the finger board at all, the pickups actually sound really good. I was anticipating replacing the pickups...but I might just leave them for now. I DO want to replace the plastic tuners with some locking metal ones that will feel better and be easier to work with, but this thing holds tune very well actually. Electronics are good and not scratchy and don't pop. The frets do need a once over with some steel wool, but that's perfectly okay.

You want this? Just get it! If there's a lead time that just means you'll get a nice surprise from yourself in the future. So glad I ordered this when I did and didn't let a lead time scare me away. Great job!

Pros:
Immediately fell in love.
The body shape and the weight feel right. Note I'm 6' tall with larger hands, and I play Danelectro BT66 just fine. I now prefer the Jag body style over the BT66, which puts me in a predicament. I would consider buying a second HB Jag Bari because of the price and the modifications you could make.
The pickups are dirty when they need to be. I use a Quad Cortex as my central amplification, and the clean sounds clear. No complaints about the pickups. The neck pickup sounds better than my Dano BT66 neck pickup.
Overall the string setup is not great. It could use new strings from Stringjoy (my favs). I tuned it to a standard A tuning which it took quickly out of the box. So far, its stayed in tune.


Cons:
Poor shipping. The guitar did have some padding in the box, which was in a box that didn't fit the first box. I was lucky the guitar wasn't broken.

All said I would repurchase this guitar and most likely will as a backup.

If you aren't a guitar snob then this is a pretty incredible guitar for $166 USD (sans shipping). I would expect to pay at least least $300-400 minimum if this were a brand-new Squire not currently victim of a price-gouge trend due to a certain band that some folks absolutely LOATHE...

Anyway, I bought this guitar because I've always wanted a baritone and was curious about what a 30" neck would play like after having just bought a 27" for my first baritone. I had to do some research to make sure the price wasn't a scam because I'd never heard of Thomman prior to seeing this pop in a baritone group I'm in on FB (shoutout BO). Once I was assured enough to place an order and then 3 months after the backorder had arrived, I was blown away at the quality of the build overall. All of my frets were even with no edges poking out. Intonation was fine but I haven't gotten around to replacing the factory strings and tuning this to my preferred tuning yet, so out-of-the-box I'd say it feels great. The sounds is fine/"just okay." They're exactly what you'd expect from a lower price-point guitar, no crazy noise but nothing to write home about. I plan to likely upgrade the pickups to SD P90s just because the better quality in general, and because I like to play with wires from time to time.

It comes with a replica Hipshot bridge which looks great but if you've played a Hipshot before then you can feel the quality difference between the real-deal and a copy (I have no idea if it affects the tone, but for sake of spending money I don't have then I'm just going to pretend that it does and eventually replace it with a legitimate Hipshot). As some have said already, the tuners are plastic so those will be the first thing I replace when the time comes. Unfortunately at the moment, this guitar is behind two others that take priority for mods at the present moment.

Overall, considering the price point in comparison to the product I received, I'd give this a 5 out of 5 but I had to be honest about the sound and quality when rating. They're pickups! They're definitely P90s! They sound like P90s in $166 guitar... take it for what it is ;)

I ordered this guitar about a week after their initial release and received mine about 3.5 months later, which was quite the wait but I was prepared and had no rush. I had read about the plastic tuners and ordered a set of nice locking ones to replace them right away, but honestly the stock ones are just fine. The machine heads I ordered had two faulty ones in the set (yay) and I am using two stock tuners for the time being, and if I could go back I would not even bother changing them out. The guitar was set up for B standard out the box and played surprisingly well. I put a set of .24-.84 gauge strings on mine and set it up for double drop D#, it intonated with no problems and loves it. Fit and finish is 4/5, a couple of lacquer stains around the fretboard edges, there is some glue squeeze-out around the frets, the fretboard was completely bone dry and the fret ends have a little bit of bite to them, but nothing major and for the the price, acceptable. Hardware-wise, the pickup switch feels pretty low quality, it is weirdly squeaky, but so far has worked fine. The volume knob is a little noisy when dialed, which I have seen in other HB guitars as well, so before using live I might have to get the wiring looked at. Overall, still, exceptional value and definitely loads of fun! The P90's might not be everyone's taste, but I really love the spanky tone and am excited to use it a lot in the future.

I'd recently gotten interested in baritone guitars and I wanted to get the Squier VM Jazzmaster but it's impossible to find in my price range. Enter the Harley Benton JA Baritone.

Awhile back I'd read and saw videos talking about loads of QC issues, I expected at least a few minor issues considering the price point, but I was very surprised. I have to say that I believe they stepped up their QC on their most recent batches, the guitar came in perfect shape, required very little setup, intonated perfectly out of the box (currently in drop G.)

I played this thing for HOURS as soon as I got it. It's so much fun to play, the neck feels great, easier to play than other baritone guitars I have played, the longer scale length is barely noticeable because the neck is so comfortable and easy to maneuver. The P90 pickups sound great in hi gain modes, and even better in clean tones.

The fretboard was pretty dry, but the frets themselves are smooth, no sharp edges, pretty well polished, and absolutely no dead spots.

The tuning pegs are okay, I'd heard complaints about the tuning stability before, but in my experience this thing is very stable. After hours of play beating this thing up it never went out of tune in the least.

I originally got this thinking it would be a mod platform, and after experiencing it, I may replace very little (maybe the nut and string trees) because everything on this guitar is pretty well done!

If you're interested in a Jazzmaster clone, or a baritone guitar in general BUY THIS GUITAR.

Like many others I have been waiting months to get my hands on this guitar. I can say that wait was 110% worth it. The quality of this guitar is outstanding. I bought my son a guitar for Christmas that was 3x's the price of this from a company celebrating it's 40th anniversary
and it was trash. Fretwork was horrible, went out of tune every day, just a really bad guitar. The bigger, older companies have a lot to learn from Harley Benton. Like everyone else has already said, the only weak point on this guitar is the tuners but for the price and quality otherwise, I have no problem paying to upgrade those. And a massive thanks to Thomann for the super fast shipping. I had it in the US in less than a week.