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.

I feel really bad knocking a star off this product for quality but it did disappoint at first, even at this price.
The strings were so bad they some snapped when tuning it up for the first time. The saddles were all over the place and the frets were uneven and sharp.
But then as an independent guitar tech with my own workshop, I know that much more expensive instruments need setting up before they are at their best and the strings supplied usually need replacing right away.
If you go for one of these, you should expect to either spend some time setting it up yourself or take it to a shop to have a full set-up to get the most out of it. But then that's actually true of most most guitars ...

This isn't your typical "Losing my religion" mandolin. There isn't much in the way of acoustic sound to it, so having an amp is pretty much mandatory. Having said that, it's a really fun unit, and somthing you can use for the occasional mandolin playing in a live setting, where the lack of acoustic behaviour might actually be a benefit. Getting this to feedback will probably not be very easy.

You should be comfortable with doing a set-up of the mandolin. When I got it the strings were way too high for my taste, and the intonation wasn't really up to snuff, but that's nothing you can't fix with a couple of twists with the hex keys.

I am an infrequent but experienced player of mandolins and what I was looking for was a reasonably priced instrument which I could use on the occasions (writing, playing, performing) when I needed to. What I got for the price of a good night out far exceeded my expectations.

Firstly, it looks stunning and the build quality is, without qualification, excellent.

The instrument was playable out of the box, a pleasure to play and, importantly to me, after a good half hour noodling my fingers were still good.

It looks stunning and the build quality is excellent.

Plugged in you have a good basic sound. I don't understand why reviewers say it doesn't sound like a mandolin. It's electric you can make it sound how you want.

Obviously it hasn't an acoustic sound but it is pleasant and quiet for practicing.

I did lower the action at the saddles after a while because it was easy to do (and lower is always better) and will set it up some more when I have the time. Having experience of acoustic mandolins I was particularly surprised at the scope and ease of adjustment. String length, saddle height, neck and pick ups are all easily adjusted and have loads of range.

A big thumbs up for this type of mandolin and for this particular model.

(+) It's a solid build - like a Tele-guitar but...
(-) for that, heavy, bulky-feeling V-neck, feels nothing like a mando. (matter of taste)
(-) The frets are uneven and have sharp edges
(+) The hardware is solid, too, but...
(-) the 4-barrel/nut Tele-like bridge does not work well on a mandolin. The string guides of each barrel, as well as the intonation screws are off-center, which might not be a problem on a Tele, but the string tension on a mandolin is much greater, not just downward tension. The result is the barrels leaning completely on one side, leaving the other side hanging in the air. this happens mostly when trying to lower the action.
(-) Each pair of strings is fed through the same hole on the back of the bridge which seems sort of makeshift, not really well thought out. And this probably also adds to the leaning barrel problem.
(+) The electronics work and sound fine. With both pickups on, you get a nice funky guitar sound (if that's what you're going for). Actually, you get a pretty nice range of sound combinations for such a small package. That's definitely a big plus which makes it a lot of fun.
(+) It's great for practicing in the middle of the night, unplugged or of course with headphones plugged into your favorite amp or amp-sim.

Finally it's a really fun instrument with lots of sounds to experiment with. But don't expect a ready-to-play, low-action, mando-shredder. So if your willing to put in some work (or you have no feeling in your fingertips), it's definitely a good bang for the buck. But I just wanted a practice mando that doesn't upset my neighbors. I think I'd rather just stuff a normal mandolin with foam.

I'm pretty comfortable working on guitars, in fact I enjoy it, so I bought this as a little project.

I'd only messed around with Mandolins and decided that it was about time to get one in the house and as I was going through a Tele phase this seemed like a perfect fit!

It does not sound like a mandolin, but it gets that kind of flavour if you're looking to add textures/layers to a recording.

The amplified sound is a little dull, although this may be down to the original strings, and there is not a huge difference between pick up locations. However, as above, I have found uses for it when needing to add extra layers or textures to recordings.

It was playable out of the box but needed a fair amount of work to make it playable to my liking - so work was done to the neck, frets, nut and 'saddles'. The actual finish of the instrument is great and as a little practice instrument it has been brilliant.

If you are looking for a 'serious' mandolin, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a robust project instrument and want something different this is for you!