Harley Benton SC DLX Gotoh | A modern-feeling Les Paul with incredible specs for €349? Review & Demo

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This is the Harley Benton SC DLX Gotoh in Daphne Blue!

A modern take on the Gibson Les Paul style of singlecut guitar, the SC DLX Gotoh is pretty much top of the range for Harley Benton, and at €349, it looks like pretty incredible value on paper.

Get the SC DLX here:

As the name not so subtly implies, you get Gotoh hardware – in the form of the tuners, bridge and tailpiece – and stainless steel frets, Tesla VR-2 humbuckers (with a coil split option), a Graph Tech TUSQ XL nut, and… a rosewood fingerboard! How nice to see a rosewood board on a more affordable guitar in 2021.

The SC DLX Gotoh’s body – which is slimmer than that of a traditional Les Paul – is nyatoh, and on this guitar it’s finished in a beautiful satin Daphne Blue. The gold and black hardware and 7-ply binding help make the instrument look a lot more expensive that it actually is. The neck is mahogany, and if you know your Les Pauls, you’ll be at home with it: the scale length is 628 mm, and the fingerboard radius 305 mm.

All of this adds up to a guitar that would normally cost way more than €349. So, how do Harley Benton do it? And is the SC DLX Gotoh really all it’s cracked up to be? That’s what we’ finding out today, as I put the guitar through a series of tough tonal tests to see just how many genres and sounds it can handle. We’ll go through all of my favorite styles: indie, country, classic rock, alternative rock, and a bit of heavier stuff too. Everything is played into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, and I use my Greer Lightspeed and Revv G3 dirt pedals for the drive sounds.


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

00:00 Hello!
00:39 Introduction and what we’re doing today
01:25 SC DLX Gotoh specs and info specs and info
06:01 Today’s rig

Clean Sounds
07:17 Clean tone reference chords with all pickup options
07:52 Poppy barre chords
08:26 Blues progression
08:54 Strummed country pop chords
09:14 Country ballad arpeggios
09:27 Strummed open chords with tone pot control test
10:14 Indie pop picked chord arpeggios
10:33 Indie droning chord progression

Crunch Sounds
10:53 AC/DC inspired classic rock riff
11:17 Hendrix inspired classic rock riff
11:50 Groovy classic rock riff
12:17 Airbourne inspired classic rock riff
12:29 Classic rock rhythm riff
12:47 Southern rock picked arpeggios
13:10 60s rock rhythm tones
13:31 Indie rhythm sound
14:00 Indie rock barre chords
14:26 Volume control roll-off test
14:51 Indie octave chords riff
15:16 Indie rock edgy chords
15:45 Greta Van Fleet inspired rock riff

Mid/High-gain Overdrive Sounds
15:58 Classic hard rock riff
16:15 Glam rock riff
16:43 Foo Fighters inspired modern rock riff
17:00 Pop punk riff
17:27 Pop punk melodic lead riff
17:43 Punk rock power chords
17:58 Alternative rock riff
18:24 Progressive rock riff (Drop D tuning)
18:39 Modern rock palm-muted power chords (Drop D tuning)
19:04 Rage Against The Machine inspired groovy riff (Drop D tuning)

Clean Channel w/Revv G3 Distortion Pedal (all in Drop D tuning)
19:36 Hardcore chugging riff
19:52 Thrash metal riff
20:02 Mastodon inspired metal riff with country twang
20:15 Hardcore punk riff
20:46 Lead sounds
20:58 Classic heavy metal/sludge riff


21:32 My thoughts
22:15 First impressions on unboxing the SC DLX Gotoh – looks
22:57 Weight
23:42 Build quality and the Gotoh hardware
25:27 Playability and the neck
26:04 I love a rosewood fingerboard!
26:37 Sounds and the Tesla pickups
30:31 What other guitars could you get instead for €349?
32:44 Final conclusion


I ran the SC DLX Gotoh into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, using my Greer Lightspeed for the overdrive and my Revv G3 for the 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.

Here’s some links to those bits of gear:

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H&K Black Spirit 200 head:
Greer Lightspeed:
Revv G3:
Focusrite 4i4 (this is the newer equivalent of my 2i4, which they don’t make any more!):
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Enjoy!

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

#HarleyBenton #HarleyBentonGuitar #SCDLXGotoh #Thomann


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