Harley Benton Custom Line CLA-16SCE

From my understanding, this guitar based on a Cort L100-OC and more or less designed after the specs of a Martin 000-18CE. Clearly a Martin is build like a Volvo (Swedish car) and the Harley Benton is not. There is a lot of shortcuts on the finish. But workmanship is quite good. That said, the guitar favors the must important things such as sound and playability. It does intonate quite good and you can take chords at the 12th fret without any problems. This is usually not seen in this pricerange.

Her is my pros and cons:

Pros:
- strings are aligned at the nut
- string hight at the nut is good and low, no need to improve here
- the fret-edges are almost smooth, it is sufficient to use some wet-sanding-paper
- the 1st and 6th E-strings are located approx 4mm from the edge, it feels good
- the sound is balanced and the guitar I recieved has a fairly tight bass also
- volume is fairly loud, sound comes fast, it has a good projection, the sustain is long
- pickup sound is quite good

Cons:
- the tuners could be better, i have upgraded to a set of Kluson MS33C, that is a perfect fit
- small finish flaws
- two scratched on the back of the guitar
- the preamp controls it not aligned perfectly,
- some roughness here and there, but nothing that matters in the big picture

Verdict:
- compared to a high-end guitar, in would say 4 stars, but given the cost it is at least 5 stars,
I am confident to gig with it, to be honers I am blown away
- 6 stars to Harley Benton and Cort guitars for producing this little gem, thank you for bringing music to the poor man.

I have always been wary of purchasing acoustic instruments online without being able to play or see how they feel first. After having a look around the nearest music stores and not finding anything that was jumping out at me in the 200euro price range I said what the heck I'd give this one a try, even though there were no reviews on it yet.It was for my son to learn on so I figured it had to be good enough for that purpose and if he stuck with it he could always get a better one in a year or so.
Arrived in the usual prompt fashion from Thomann. At first glance it looks good -simple but nice, it obviously doesn't have fancy beading etc. but I think it is
still well finished and the only obvious flaw I could find was a tiny bit of roughness on the neck which I have to say wouldn't bother me but if you were being picky, maybe.
I left the strings that it came with on for a week or so, which were ok but I prefer 10's on an acoustic and these were I'd say 11's. The action on the strings as it came was again ok but I figured there was space to go lower. So when I changed the strings I took the action down and I have to say it's really nice to play now, not quite as good as my 4 times the price Tanglewood -but close.
As for the most important thing; the sound. It's very good. I teach guitar so sometimes I end up having to listen to beginners who are using guitars that are not up to much. Teaching my son on this Harley Benton I have marveled a few times at how good it sounds.
It's folky but clear without any muddiness and a nice medium sustain. Through the pickup it sounds good too with no feedback through a Roland cube amp..
For the money compared to others I've tried I was definitely surprised, this guitar is really good value.