Harley Benton HBMA-50 Mandoline VS

I haven't had any prior experience with mandolins. I've bought it to check out if I like these instruments or not (it turned out I LOVE THEM!).

What hit me just after unpacking is that the body finish. The photos on the Thomann site implies something like 3 Tone Sunburst, when in fact it's more of a dull 2 Tone Sunburst. Not that bad, but not great either.

Mandolin arrived completely not set up - no intonation, no string height. The nut was a tad too high as well( first few frets were sharp tonewise) - sanding it off helped a lot. Frets are fine, the tuners are a bit hard to tune. Strings were not terrible, but rather on the bad side. Replacing them with D'addario improved the sound a lot and now the tuners keep the tune way better.

Soundwise - it's a twangy little beast with rather poor sounding G string. Anyway, it sounds like a mandolin. What else do you want for that money?

To conclude. Is it perfect instrument ? Not at all. Is it fun to play? Hell yes! Would I buy it again? Yup!