Pros:
The guitar is a solid body guitar for a great price. That's the main selling point here. It also looks good from a distance.
Cons:
- The finish on the guitar has many dust particles under it, making the surface a lot less smooth to the touch. This is to be expected for an instrument at this price, as it is difficult to keep the guitars dust free in a factory environment.
- The tuning pegs are cheap, and they have a bit of dead space in them.
- The nut is cut poorly, and the strings are both too high, and there the slots are too narrow giving a lot of binding. Some pencil will help with the binding, but really the guitar needs professional work for most players.
- Harley Benton uses the same saddles for everything it seems, and because this has an under-saddle pickup, the string height came in at a mile-high 3.25 mm. Now, you always expect the guitar to come in with slightly too high action from the factory, but 3.25 mm. will be unplayable for most. I sanded it down to spec 2.25, and the guitar plays a lot better.
- However, there is now some minor buzz in the upper registers of the guitar, as the fretwork also isn't perfect.
- The fretboard gives off grey residue on fingers. This is likely the result of the fretboard having been painted darker. I'm not a hundred percent sure of this is the reason, but nevertheless your fingers will be grey after playing. This should alleviate on its own in time.
The conclusion is that this guitar will work fine, and has a nice sound for the price, but you will need to do some work to make it playable, and if you're not able to sand down your saddle and cut the nut, it will probably need some professional work which will add significantly to the price. In the end, the guitar is fair for its price, but has a lot of minuses, which frankly any guitar at this price is likely to have.
