Harley Benton D-120CE-LH BK

I've been playing guitar for many years and I bought this one for one reason: price.
I've played it now daily for more than 2 months, so almost 100 hours.
What can I say?
Sound is excellent. Haven't even tried electric yet because I have no amp/speaker. Clean sound, no buzzing, great echo.
The grip and handling are smooth, it feels good to hold it which is important to me. Low in weight too, easy to handle.
To any beginner guitarists I recommend to change the strings. Why? Because the action (the distance between the strings and the guitar neck) is high, especially beyond the 7th fret. That makes it a bit difficult to play. It comes with standard steel strings, you may wanna change that to bronze strings. They are easier to press down. That's important for playing bar(-ré) chords. Even I couldn't play a clear sounding bar chord with the steel strings and it isn't because of my technique. It's the strings and the action.
If there's 1 thing I recommend to Thomann, it's to lower the action of the strings. They're quite high and since mostly beginners will buy this instrument because of the low price, you wanna make it easier for them to play.
Last but not least: I tried a Fender and was about to buy it. Then I saw this one and bought it. Not only does it sound equal, it also saved me 100 euro's.
Thank you Thomann for building this great instrument at a price available to everyone.
I recommend this guitar for both absolute beginners (change the strings!) and experienced players as a backup or rehearsal guitar. Excellent buy, wonderful instrument.

As for the acoustic part - as for me it sounds amazing. The guitar looks great and is almost playable right out of the box. One thing that many can find hard to overcome tho is the very high strings action. I had to file the saddle a lot to get to the point when I wouldn't have to bend my fingers in a weird way not to mute another strings while being on the 10th fret and above. That's the only, not that bad since it can be relatively easily fixed, con about the acousting part of this product.

Now unfortunately we have to go to the point where the 2 stars for the quality come from. Someone just destroyed the piezoelectric pickup while installing it! It was just literally cut with pliers as it wouldn't fit due to the hole for the cable being drilled in the wrong place! I just can't imagine someone thinking that it's easier to destroy the entire pickup instead of drilling a new hole in the right place! It takes no effort to process the thought that after such operation it won't work! Since the piezoelectric pickup cost just a little bit more than a can of coke I decided to just drill the right hole and replace it myself rather than wait who knows how long for thomann to fix that.

After it was done - I was surprised that even tho the entire pickup assembly is worth less than 10€ it still sounds pretty decent!

So the summary is a bit hard to come up with - it's totally worth the price and it sounds just great but after seeing what someone did with that pickup... I'd feel bad if I'd just write that I recommend this guitar. All I can say is that you can buy it if you're not scared of being forced to fix some things in case someone would butcher your unit as mine was.

This is my first acoustic.played well out of the box well packed.A few days delivery from Germany, amazing.Opening the battery hatch was challenging, but once open reveiled a very nasty
Zinc battery.Bin it and fit a Alkaline. A picky little gripe I know. But a loverly axe.Also included are 2 adhesive scratch plates black and tortoise.Very loud.Sounds good through my Fender Champion 40,the graphic equalizer is very effective.I had found that it gos out of tune when you first take it out of its bag.An easy fix.The action is high on the high frets.Just a up date.just sold this guitar on for what I though was a better one.i regret it.i miss it.

First of all, I bought this because I actually wanted an acoustic steel strung guitar with a cut-away, and wasn't fussy about the electronic pick-up. I have to say, for the price, the guitar (as per every Harley Benton I have bought) is a beautiful piece of kit to look at; the finish is lovely, the guitar feels solid, the machine heads are pretty good and hold tuning, and the frets aren't too bad. The problem (as another reviewer pointed out) was the height of the action. It was, quite frankly, unplayable. I always set my guitars up after purchasing, but in this case I had no choice but to take the strings off and plane then sand 3mm off the wooden bridge plate - something many wouldn't be brave enough to do. I also lowered the grooves in the nut and cut down the bridge height (note here that the bridge and nut were of a soft, cheap plastic material).
The guitar now plays pretty well, and I'm quit pleased with it. Again, I cannot over-emphasise what a lovely-looking guitar this is. It looks far more expensive (again, typical of Harley Bentons). It's a pity the far-too-high action let the build quality down. Still, for the price, if you are prepared to do a little work, you'll have a very fine instrument indeed.

Had a classical guitar that I never used, so sold it and bought this HB instead. It's a very pleasant surprise. It's more than all right out of the box, no worries if you don't want to hack it, but a bit of an upgrade bumps up the sound quality considerably.

Equalizing, sanding and polishing the frets, changing the saddle inlay to bone (be prepared to make a left handed compensated version), adding better strings / graphite in the nut make a very noticeable difference in the sound / smoothness of tuning / playablility.

This guitar is a real crowdpleaser in small family gatherings. The construction is robust, too, just throw it in the boot and off you go.

The pickup exists and it is functional, but there are better ones, but it'll do for occasional amateur recording.

After playing it for a wile the only negative point was the thick lacquer layer on the neck, it is a quality coating, so it does not come down, but it was a littlebit uncomfortable to play.

So I sanded down the neck really to the wood, so below the foundation. This wood is pinkish mahogany with a relatively light colour. My guess is it is the toona sinensis, which would be consistent with the guitar being (very well) made in China. Then gave it a modern, synthetic matt transparent finish from France, about 4 layers sanding down to fine gradually. Now it's plays comfortably and looks great, too.

That's an advantage of this guitar: at this price point you can really experiment with relatively drastic measures, you can customize it with little risk.

Its nicely made, feels much higher quality than the price suggests.
Had it a little over a month and it hasnt let me down yet.
It sounds great with nice warm bass tones, but bright enough at the top end.
Remains in tune after initial tuning well.
Came sufficiently packaged.
I only use it as an acoustic, but liked the idea of of having the option to plug in should I need to.
The pickup isnt great, but as I said that isnt really an issue for me.
Only other little negative was a couple of the frets were quite sharp - but nothing a quick file hasnt fixed.

Overall, I'm very happy, and would recommend to anyone who wants a nice to play acoustic without breaking the bank.

This thing was cheap and considering the price it was pretty decent. I've played worse for sure.

I bought this as a first full size acoustic for my son. He liked the gloss black finish and it does look pretty smart. It got him started and he played the hell out of it for the first six months but was always going to be seduced by electric. We since sold this on to another student only losing £10 on the deal.

Overall, a positive experience for a beginner....it's no Takamine or Taylor, obviously. It's a cheap acoustic but it had a decent tone and sounded very nice. Action was a bit high for my taste but not bad enough to be problematic and my boy never felt uncomfortable with it either.

If you want a new, cheap acoustic, that's what you're getting with this model - nothing fancy, nothing earth shattering but it's not a piece of junk either, like so many cheap guitars can be. If you just want to try and mike some nice acoustic noise, it's up to the task.

Churlish to complain too much at the price point we're talking here. If your expectations are reasonable you probably won't be disappointed by this entry level model.