Harley Benton Delta Blues OE

The guitar arrived in good condition and apart from some glue residue under the bridge looks well built. All it needed was a tune up, and presto. For a cheap extra guitar it played well enough.

But: when i tuned to DADDAD open tuning, which is why i wanted the guitar, the low E (now D) rattled on 7 and 8th fret. As the action already was a bit high, i could not adjust neck, nut or bridge.
I decided to try a low E (052) from a Peavey 011 set, and that solved the problem.
The high E, and B string sound dull. This is a common complaint of the cheap HB 012 set, so I hope to solve that with the peavey 011 set, which i use for all my acoustic guitars.

I ordered at the same time the HB "baby taylor copy", which is excellent, for that price. Gave me confidence to order the Epiphone Riviera custom P93.

I've been playing for decades and own many guitars - a few very pricey, but most of them low - mid price but well set up - so I have a little experience. I had fairly low/realistic expectations of this guitar, but it's become my current favourite acoustic (for anything that's practical without a cutaway). I love the dark, smokey look of it, and the matt finish; as others have said, the blackburst is better in real life than in promotional pictures. It's very light in weight, so no problem to play for hours standing up. The sound is lovely acoustically, and plugged in, the piezo is as good as any other of it's type, tuner/eq is nice and easy to see/use. I have done some setting up - adjusted truss rod, levelled frets in a few spots, filed the nut, and shaved a little off the base of the bridge....but this is no more than I'd expect to do with a guitar costing 5 or 6 times the price. It was very playable out of the box, but the tweaks make it a real pleasure to play, so if you're not comfortable doing set ups, I'd recommend spending a few extra pounds getting your local guitar tech to check it over. I also changed the tuners - but more because I thought black ones would look better than because the stock ones were particularly bad. I'm kind of blown away by this bargain, and have only held back on a couple of stars because....well....it's a £100.00 guitar and I don't want you to think it's equal to a £5,000.00 guitar. It is very much equal to a lot of £500 or £600.00 guitars though, in my opinion, and for me, it has the perfect look and sound for the kind of alt country stuff I like to play acoustically, and it'll have it's first gig in a few day's time!

I really want to love this guitar, but when it arrived several frets were so low that I had to have portions of the neck re-fretted. The 4th, 9th, and 11th frets were nearly smooth with the neck, which also had a slight warp.
The instrument's sound is great, but I didn't like having to take it to a luthier just to make it playable. I'll still order from Thomann Music, just not another guitar, and likely not one of their own brand of products.
After having the instrument re-fretted, some wood shaved off the fingerboard, and the bridge adjusted, it sounds and works great.