Harley Benton GS-Travel Mahogany

I bought this to play lounging on my sofa, laying on my bed or outside in the garden.
Out of the box, it's very playable - I haven't changed anything.
The mahogany gives a warmth to the sound, which I like. On a guitar body this small I don't think you'd need the brighter sound of a spruce top - I haven't tried the spruce version though.
Mine has a closely grained mahogany top rather than the more striped look of the one in the pictures - mine looks lovely. It's pretty light weight - ideal for what I bought it for. It sounds and projects much better than you'd think from the size (and price).
If I hadn't bought a CLA-15m soon after I'd be picking this up all the time - as it is, I pick it up a lot.
It has clarity, punch and warmth that are way above it's size and price tag.
Now the big question - is it as good as the Taylor? I have no idea, I've never played one. But it's the wrong question and missing the point; For the likely intended uses of this guitar, it's as good as you need.
Don't get me wrong - it sounds good, it plays well and it's fun to play. But do you really need to pay over £500 for a travel/sofa guitar?
It's hard to justify that unless you're recording with it a lot (to cut through the mix - and this will do the job). Or maybe want a smaller scale instrument for a child/teen. You could buy this and get two custom line acoustics (Harley Bentons) for that money - I know which I'd prefer and that's exactly what I've done.
Tuners - they do their job. People complain about a lot of new guitars not holding their tuning but it's just because they haven't bedded the strings in - (pull them away from the guitar 3-4 times, tune the string back up, do this 3 times for each string - you'll now hold your tuning). Speaking of which - when I tried that on this guitar the peg came off on the lower E string - I'm not bothered; I put it back in and developed a method of pulling the string parallel to the body, which works fine.
Construction is fine - don't expect bone nuts and bridge saddles at this price.
It's very neat and tidy, rather attractive and I love the curve on the back.
I have an old Martin travel guitar - I never play it. This is so much better - it's a proper guitar, just a bit smaller and light weight.
For the price it's a bargain - it even comes with a neat little gig bag.
If you want a full blown acoustic, I'd recommend one of the custom line ones. But I have plenty of guitars and I can't resist this little beauty - it gets far more of my attention than the price would suggest.
You know you want one.

I bought this for teaching guitar. I work in primary schools and I needed a travel style axe and flexibility as I cycle to work. Also I wanted a guitar that I wasn't very precious about it, as younger students might like to try their talent with it while I'm out of the room....
I am a lefty and I knew I would have to change a few things to use it. (There was no lefty option available at the time of purchase). First job, I had to the change the mini tuner heads, they just didn't do the guitar any justice. I built a lefty bone nut and re-angled the saddle to mirror the direction for lefty, .The bridge material took the reworking very well..
The bag lasted about 2 years before wear and tear started shredding the straps, I gave it a lot of hardship as I attached other bags around the arm straps, with a heavy sheet binder and sometimes shopping etc. It was a champ......
The tone is lovely and warm, bright, punchy and clear. It has surprisingly good volume, maybe because of the bowled back. the neck profile is very comfortable and I love the scale length. It feels strange to go back to a Takemine.
All round lovely little guitar for any purpose. Sounds nice acoustic and in recordings.
It holds its own in a teaching environment against a couple of dreadnought guitars volume wise.
I give it about 25 hours of playing a week. It is showing no signs of fatigue after over 5 years, frets are still solid and straight, no fingerboard wear.
If anything happened to my present model, I would consider buying the lefty version. Hope this helps.

I own this guitar for almost 2 years now and I absolutely love it. It's my only guitar at the moment and I play it daily.
I have been playing guitar for about 10 years. I mostly fingerpick and this is where this little guitar excells. It can also handle some light strumming but don't expect wonders.

All in all I would certainly recommend this guitar to beginners but also to more advanced players looking or a great little guitar to leave around in the living room or to take on holidays.
I have owned more expensive Takamine guitars and sold them all beccause I didn't play them anymore.

Even famous brands trend to have issues with entry level instruments, this is not the case here. One might want to improve the fretting finish and obviously change the strings, but out of the box the intonation was surprisingly good.
The sound is on the treble side, pretty bright, a bit zingy but that's exactly what I was looking for. It's not the best acoustic guitar, but it's a good one. I particularly enjoy the shorter scale, and although I'm not a fan of v necks, this one is not too exaggerated so it's fine.
I don't mind the looks, it could be ugly with the same soubd and playability I wouldn't mind, but it turns out that it's quite nice to look at, the headstock looks better in real life than in pictures.
The bag is ok, not just a dust cover, but rather tight. I could use an outside pocket for picks, bar, bottleneck and strings because the front pocket on a gig bag is a bit dangerous to use for thick or heavy items being in front of the table.
Excellent value for the money.

I had this guitar for almost 4 years. I loved it. It played nicely and sounded great for the price. An absolute bargain. That was at first. I never dropped it or treated it badly but after about one and a half years a small crack appeared on the headstock, I didn't think much of it, I thought it was just cosmetic. I didn't play it for some time, it was in the gig bag in my closet. When I had owned it about 3 years I took it out again and with every tuning the crack just got bigger and bigger. I asked Thomann to swap it but they said it was out of warranty. I said the fault appeared under warranty period but they said it doesn't matter because I only reported it after the warranty period had ended. They said I could pay to get it repaired by them. I didn't bother. Pay to send a 100e guitar to Germany for repair? It was unfixable anyway, glue wouldn't work. Now about four years since purchase, today the headstock snapped completely. It was really nice while it lasted but a guitar should not break like this under normal use. This guitar isn't built to last. I won't buy another. I am not happy with the service from Thomann either. They should have replaced it free of charge, the fault appeared under warranty time but was not reported until after the warranty period so they didn't want to help this previously loyal customer.

I've had this little guitar for around a month now and I just can't put it down. It's the perfect companion for travelling around, or just chilling on the sofa - it really has rekindled my love for playing.

Pros - this is surprisingly well built, especially considering it only costs 75 euros! Having compared it directly to the Taylor GS mini (which it is pretty much an exact copy of the body and neck shape), it is just as well made, and actually more robust in some ways as it has proper binding on the edges of the body, where the Martin just has raw plywood edges. The finish on mine was great too - I really like the subtle satin lacquer. The case is well made too, and is also very similar to the taylor case. The sound is clear, loud and well balanced considering the body is so small and the mahogany top gives a great mellow roundness to the sound.

Cons - There are really only a few very minor niggles with this little guitar - it's really easy to play but for me the action was a tiny bit too high out of the box - that was easily fixed by sanding the underside of the plastic bridge a little. Also the factory fitted strings weren't great, a decent set of phosphor bronze ones fixed that though. Personally I'm not a huge fan of the shape of the head-stock, but that's just my taste and can be overlooked for the incredible value this guitar represents.

The only way this could be improved upon was if Thomann could offer an electro-acoustic version - then I'd buy the spruce version as well!

Overall I would highly recommend this product, just a bit of a shame I had to wait 4 weeks for it come back into stock, but I guess that just shows how popular and great value they are!