Harley Benton JA-60CC vs Hartwood Drifter | Which is the best sub $200 offset guitar? Shootout!

Today, we’re comparing the two sub-$200 offset electric guitars: it’s the Harley Benton JA-60CC up against the Hartwood Drifter!

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Harley Benton JA-60CC: https://thmn.to/thoprod/514488?offid=...
Hartwood Drifter: https://tidd.ly/4oUBI9x
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Let me start by saying that these two guitars are both excellent choices, and especially at the prices they command. At time of writing (November 2025) the Harley Benton JA-60CC costs $175/€179, while the Hartwood comes in at $199/€199.

They’re both ‘house brand’ guitars, too: Harley Benton is the Thomann guitar brand, while Hartwood belongs to Gear4Music. So, who’s offering the best bang for your buck budget offset?

Well, I bought my JA-60CC a couple of years ago, and I love it. It looks lovely and traditional in Seafoam Green, and the slightly smaller body size – compared to a Fender or Squier offset – is really comfy. Specs-wise, it’s great too. You get a basswood body and a roasted maple neck with a laurel board.

The neck is a comfy C shape and has a 648 mm scale length for its 21 medium jumbo frets, along with a 12” fingerboard radius. At the body, you get a pair of Roswell JM Alnico-5 vintage style Jazzmaster-type pickups, and a hardtail bridge.

The Drifter, meanwhile, has a slightly larger basswood body, and a beautiful Sunburst finish. The neck here is also roasted maple and 648 mm, but here you get 22 medium frets and a super flat 16” fingerboard radius. At the body, you get a pair of P90 pickups and a vintage-style vibrato bridge.

So what we have here is two similarly priced offsets with a couple of major differences. The key question is, then: which one is going to be best for you? Let’s find out! In the video, I put the two guitars through their paces in as many different musical styles as I can, from country, folk and indie, to pop, rock, punk, metal, and more, so hopefully by the end you’ll be able to decide which one is right for you.

Let me know which guitar you prefer in the comments!

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

00:00 Introduction and what we’re doing today
01:49 Harley Benton JA-60CC specs and info
04:41 Hartwood Drifter specs and info
07:31 Today’s rig and plan

08:32 Clean tone reference chords on all guitars/pickup settings
09:06 Clean tone samples (folk, country, pop, indie, blues, funk, etc.)
11:30 Indie and alternative rock tones
14:34 Classic rock tones (AC/DC, Hendrix, etc.)
16:45 Hard rock tones
19:25 Progressive and modern rock tones
20:16 Metal tones

21:44 My thoughts
22:48 Looks
23:48 Price
24:08 Build quality and hardware
25:42 Weight
26:21 Playability, neck and feel
27:47 Sounds and pickups
30:30 What other similar guitars are out there?
31:11 Which guitar is best? Which should you buy?

My setup was as follows: I ran the guitars into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, also using my Greer Lightspeed, Friedman BE-OD Deluxe, 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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Get all this gear at Thomann: https://thmn.to/thocf/jkhog8l06m
Get all this gear at Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/LXqdE0
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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#HarleyBenton #HarleyBentonGuitar #JA60CC #Jazzmaster #Hartwood #HartwoodGuitars #Gear4music #OffsetGuitars #Offset #RichWordsMusic

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!

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