Harley Benton DC-Junior FAT Faded Cherry: Fat neck, more tones
A new fat-neck tone monster from Harley Benton
4,9 / 5,0 | 
The new DC-Junior FAT Faded Cherry is Harley Benton’s latest take on the classic ’50s American student guitar known for its great tone and stripped back vibe. This one, however, will cost you a fraction of an original. It even has a few modern tweaks to make it slightly more playable and provide more sound options.
’50s Student Vibe
An original ’50s Les Paul Jr Double Cut ‘student guitar’ by Gibson will cost you an arm and a leg these days. Even one of Gibson’s modern recreation from them is still pretty expensive. So this new Harley Benton DC-Junior FAT Faded Cherry could be a great way to cop the look and tone of an original, but at a fraction of the cost.
Harley Benton DC-Junior FAT Faded Cherry with a chunky neck · Source: Thomann
DC-Junior FAT Faded Cherry
As the name suggests, this new DC-Junior FAT model has a fatter neck than the first Harley Benton model in a Dirty Mustard* finish. With a mahogany body and neck fitted with an ebony fretboard and 22 medium jumbo frets, this model is close to a US made guitar, albeit Gibson uses rosewood for the fretboard. This guitar comes with a ‘split-able’ the Roswell P90D stack STK4P alnico-5, a P100-style pickup with a stacked humbucker design. So there are more sound options available here than on the original Gibson model which had a P90, which sounds great but can be susceptible to hum.
Harley Benton DC-Junior FAT Faded Cherry · Source: Thomann
Wraparound
The DC-Junior FAT Faded Cherry uses an adjustable wraparound bridge which is an enhancement over the original American design. It should be easier to get the intonation spot on with his Harley Benton model. The 15:1 gear ratio vintage-style tuners should do the job of keeping everything in tune. The guitar comes from the factory with fitted with a set of gauge 10 D’Addario strings.
In summary, you’re getting a lot of guitar here for not a lot of money. In the video below Andy Ferris of Guitar Geek fame gives a bit of background about how this particular model came about as well as a quick sound demo. The model should be available in the next month or so but you can follow the link below to pre-order one now.
I’m a huge fan of DC Junior-style guitars and gigged one for many years, so this new fat neck model has immediately caught my attention.
RRP – GBP 210/EUR 249
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5 responses to “Harley Benton DC-Junior FAT Faded Cherry: Fat neck, more tones”
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I ordered this guitar as soon as I read about it. I am a P90 nut and am prepared to replace the Stacked P90 if I don’t like it. On pre-order at Thomann. Availability at end of April. I have also ordered the new Epiphone “Inspired by Gibson” Les Paul Junior. Should be an interesting comparison.
I am also going to have another “Single Cut” Junior style guitar built for me, soon. This time with a bit of a twist. Instead of a single P90 in the bridge position, this guitar will have single P90 in the neck position. Like other single pickup guitars, (i.e. Les Paul Juniors and Fender Esquires) taking advantage of the fact that there is no other pickup creating a magnetic pull on the strings.
This is the reason that Les Paul Juniors sound different (more aggressive) than their 2 pickup brethren. The same is true regarding Fender Esquires vs. Telecasters.
It will have a Mahogany body and neck an Ebony fretboard and a ” Fat” 50’s neck profile as well.
Seeing that I live on the neck pickups of most of my guitars, this may very well be the last guitar I will ever need.
Single pickup guitars are also cool in that they kind of “push you into a corner” forcing you to “make them work” in some situations that you would normally use a two pickup guitar for. I once saw the great Duke Robillard use a fender Esquire on a Jazz ballad. Great fun!
this is a nice point of view….you have to use more of your own skills to make it work
What is the reverb pedal you are using?