Harley Benton has unveiled the newly updated and refreshed DC Custom series, offering the choice of White and Cherry finishes, chrome hardware on the latter, gold on the former, and, y’know, the choice of one neck or two.
That’s right, this drop includes the doublenecked DC Custom-II 612, an electric guitar that with a strong vibe of the Gibson EDS-1275, the head-turning Gibson that Jimmy Page famously used to perform Stairway To Heaven live with Led Zeppelin – and also Slash, who started packing one during the touring schedule for Use Your Illusion and digging it out for Guns N’ Roses’s epic cover of Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.
That’s the thing about the doubleneck – it requires an epic. The DC Custom-II, however, feels and looks more like your everyday rock ’n’ roll machine. Think of this one as your budget-friendly platform for Angus Young high-jinks, plus all the blues, rock and jazz you can throw at it.
These new Harley Benton guitars are radically different. C’mon, one has two necks. But they share a lot of build qualities, a lot of shared DNA. And the specs are not to be sniffed at.
We have Grover tuners with kidney bean-style buttons on both. Just looking at that DC Custom-II 612 headstock, that is an awful lot of Grovers. There are stainless steel frets.
Both feature a solid meranti build, with glued-in maranti necks topped with roasted jatoba fingerboards, inlaid with trapezoids, with the DLX TOM-style bridges and tailpieces as standard.
As per the “II” in the Custom-II designation, both feature a pair of humbuckers. You will find a set of Tesla Opus-G1s on the doubleneck, Tesla TM VR-60 Classics on the six-string, both of which are designed around an alnico V magnet and are suitably vintage voiced.
A three-way pickup selector, volume and tone controls dial in your sound, with an additional switch on the doubleneck to choose which neck is active at any one time.
For anyone who needs to be caught-up on what a doubleneck involves, that means one neck has a regular six-string configuration, while the other has 12, and having a switchable six and 12-string guitars in one instrument presents a lot of advantages.
One, it makes you look cool, especially if you’re going for the aforementioned Jimmy Page or Slash vibe. And two, it makes for a lot of versatility, with jangle and chime on the 12-string, and all the natural width and pseudo-chorusing that that entails, and a straightforward six on the other.
These are available now, exclusively via Thomann, with the DC Custom-II in Cherry priced £229/$244, the White £254/$271, with the Cherry 612 priced £508/$549, the White a little pricier at £553/$589. There’s always a small premium for the gold. For more details, head over to Harley Benton.
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