Hartwood Deytona II | Great specs, unique looks and mini humbuckers for $300? In-depth Review & Demo

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This is the Hartwood Deytona II: a rather unique looking budget offset guitar with a vibe all its own and a pair of mini humbuckers!

Hartwood Deytona II at Gear4music:

Hartwood is a house brand of the Gear4music store, and the Deytona II is the first Hartwood model I’ve ever played. (Note: Gear4music reached out to me to make this video, so consider it sponsored!)

The Deytona II appealed to me instantly. It’s cheap, and looks fantastic – like nothing else out there. This specific guitar is finished in a lovely, sparkly New England Green, but you can also pick up a Deytona II in Tobacco Burst or Solana Bay Gold.

The Deytona has excellent specs on paper considering its $300/€350/£299 price tag. For the money, you get a mahogany body which, with its center block and wings on the sides, is more than a little reminiscent of a Gibson/Epiphone Firebird.

The neck – which is maple, topped with an ebony fretboard – is set into said center block, and gives you 22 medium frets, a 14” fingerboard radius, a 25.5” scale length. You also get a bone nut and no-name vintage-style tuners at the headstock, which is finished in that lovely New England Green.

At the body, you get that pair of mini humbucking pickups. Each pup has its own volume and tone control (the pots are by Alpha), and there’s also a phase invert switch which, when you have both pickups active, can be flicked to give you those thinner, quacky, and nasal tones à la Peter Green. You also get a tune-o-matic bridge here.

That’s a whole lot of guitar for the asking price, then… but just how good is the Deytona II? Is it a new contender in the competitive world of the quirky cheap electric guitar? It’s time to find out! In this video, I put the guitar through its paces in as many different musical styles as I can, from country, folk and indie, to pop, rock, punk, metal, and more – let’s see how it handles it!

Let me know your thoughts on the Deytona II in the comments!

Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:

00:00 Hello!
00:14 Introduction to the Deytona II and Hartwood Guitars
02:01 Specs and features
04:44 Today’s rig and plan

05:21 Clean tone reference chords on all pickup settings
05:57 Clean tone samples (folk, country, pop, indie, blues, funk, etc.)
07:56 Tone control test
08:56 Indie and alt rock tones
11:55 Volume control roll off test
12:16 Classic rock tones
14:21 Fuzz tones (garage rock, Jack White, Black Keys, Smashing Pumpkins, etc.)
16:14 Hard rock tones
17:51 Alternative rock tones
18:28 Punk rock tones
19:19 Progressive rock tones
20:16 Metal tones

21:39 My thoughts
22:08 First impressions, looks
22:41 Size comparison with my Epiphone SG, Feder Tele and Ibanez Iceman
23:26 How does the guitar balance on a strap?
23:47 Weight
24:20 Build quality and hardware
25:43 Playability and neck
26:19 Sounds and pickups
29:12 What other similar guitars are out there?
30:57 My conclusions on the Deytona II and why you should buy it

My setup was as follows: I ran the Deytona II into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, also using my Marshall 1959 Super Lead, JHS Bender fuzz and Revv G3 pedals for overdrive and heavy distortion sounds. The amp went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done.

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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#Hartwood #HartwoodGuitars #Gear4music

*Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much!*

@gear4musicguitars