Harley Benton MA-500 VS Bluegrass Series

This is a fine instrument - but it needs work to realise it's full potential.
The fret ends are not just badly finished - they are totally unfinished!!! They feel sharp and unpleasant and will need a lot of work with a fret file. Out of the box, the nut was too high and the action on the verge of unplayable. It looks like they just bolted it together and rushed it out of the factory. However!!! With work - reducing the height of the nut, lowering the action and setting the intonation, it starts to come alive. For a buyer not prepared or skilled enough to make the changes -- this instrument would be a big disappointment and would need an expensive visit to a luthier to get it right. If you have average skills and enjoy tinkering with instruments then you can make the basic improvements yourself. There's a great instrument in there --- it just needs bringing out. Apart from the playability issues, the standard of finish is exceptionally high. Better quality control needed on the frets, the nut and bridge saddles.

This gets five stars overall because I don't know how they do it at the price and it works fine. I tuned it up right out of the box and it played nicely. I plugged it into my Trace Acoustic amp and it sounded nice, with good string balance. I particularly liked the sound with both pickups on. The pickup, selector switch felt positive and worked with no noise. The tuning machines felt smooth and positive. They hold the tuning. Cosmetically, you ether like the design or not, but it's well finished, with one small caveat which I mention later. With any new instrument, I like to set it up myself. The neck is straight and the purple heart wood fretboard looks good. I lowered the action to 2mm at the bass end and 1.5mm at the treble end (12th fret.) I then set the intonation so it will play in tune at the top end. No bother. The bridge assembly is sturdy and it works as it should.
I have a couple of small gripes. The 20th fret was (I fixed it) a little proud and, with the lowered action was causing the 19th fret note to choke. However, you often find this on much more expensive instruments. I'll give it a proper fret dress on its first sting change. Also, it would have been good if the pickups (which are the size of guitar pickups, and probably are - blade type) were reverse wound, reverse polarity so as to humbuck when both selected. That said, there is no noise except when you get too close to the amp. In any case, I bought it for late night silent unplugged practice. The frets, apart from no. 20, are even and fairly well finished. Another reviewer commented that the fret ends were rough. Well they are a little, but not too bad, and that is easily fixed with some wet or dry paper. I'll do this too during my first string change.
Finally, a brilliant piece of kit for the price. Needs a little set up as you might expect. I love it, but it's an absolute bargain.

This arrived thrown together without any testing or quality control. It took quite some time to set the intonation, only to eventually realise that the nut wasn't cut properly and it was impossible to tune well enough to be playable.

The Bridge won't allow the G strings to be set low enough and intonated correctly at the same time. The tuners have considerable play in them. Knock the bridge and it goes instantly out of tune.

Having said that, it sounds fabulous through a long reverb and benefits from a bit of compression and distortion. The pickups give good tone colour

I've totally fallen in love with the Mandocaster as an instrument. So this one is going back and I've ordered something better instead.

This looks and feels like a great instrument. However, the one thing it REALLY needs to be useful is not there - playability. The nut is cut so high that it's nearly impossible to push down strings on the first fret without pain. Even when you can play, the sound is not great. I didn't expect it to sound like an acoustic mandolin, but it's pretty bad. Really muddy, even with the tone cranked on the bridge pickup. Oh well, it looks good on the wall.