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!

This is my first mandolin, and as I was unsure how I would take to it, opted for a low cost instrument. In fact, this is probably the cheapest mandolin on the market, at just £49, but despite the bargain basement price this is a good quality instrument. The 'Sunburst' finish I chose is superb, and the workmanship is excellent.
The setup is equally good, with just the saddle requiring a little lowering, easily accomplished via the inbuilt adjustment wheels. The bridge would benefit from some light sanding to achieve optimum intonation, but this is often the case in all but high-end instruments.
I'm happy with the sound at present, but may upgrade to top quality J74 strings, at around £10 a set, in due course.
All in all, am delighted with my purchase, representing outstanding value for money. It arrived from Thomann promptly and very well packed.

I have always wanted a Mandolin but, 40 odd years ago when I started playing guitars, they were simply out of my price range. When I saw this on Thomann’s website, as part of a bundle including a bag, I couldn’t resist and figured I would at least be able to try it out and see if I enjoyed playing it.
Well, after playing it daily for over two months now, it turns out that playing the mandolin is really addictive and that I love playing this little thing!

Pros: The mandolin comes well packed and strung, with padding under the bridge. You have to remove the padding and adjust the bridge to set the intonation. This is relatively simple to do and there are plenty of tutorials on line showing how to do it.
The truss-rod allows the neck to be adjusted, on mine it was fine as it came.
Overall the finish is nice and aside from inside of the f-holes I couldn’t find any blemishes.
The strings are OK, particularly for someone just familiarising themselves with playing a mandolin. Most musicians will eventually change them out for something better.
After an initial settling in period for the strings the instrument, unlike the cheap guitars from years ago, remains in tune. Since tuning a mandolin can be a bit of a chore this is great.
The sound is good for the price, it’s a twangy little instrument and sounds like a mandolin should.

Cons: I have no idea why Thomann chooses to ship these with the bridge installed. While mine was well packed and undamaged there is more chance of the instrument being damaged with the bridge installed, shipping it with the bridge off the instrument would, in my opinion, be better.

I realise the following may not be “traditional” but: While the sunburst colour is very nice some other colour options, like Thomann does with their violins, may be interesting. Those of us who own blue guitars would like a blue mandolin!

In conclusion: I am very happy with my purchase and have since recommended this instrument to others. If you have even given a moment’s thought to learning to play the mandolin but were put off by the cost of instruments then this is the perfect instrument for you! I may not sound as good as the more expensive solid wood instruments but it can certainly hold its own and is by no means a toy.

I have had a hankering for a mandolin for a few years, more recently after hearing some virtuoso playing on YouTube!
The mandolin arrived incredibly well boxed and protected.
The finish is quite perfect on mine, the intonation is spot on and no adjustment was needed for the neck.
There was a bit of choking or fret-buzz on the second pair of strings (A) at the 9th and 10th fret, however, this was minimal and played out after a few days of scale practice and learning the fret board.
One initial let down were the machine heads (tuners). Six of them were fine, two were quite loose, however, a small adjustment with a screwdriver has them working perfectly.
My HBMA-50 holds it?s tune very well and the OEM strings fitted are bright and clear.
This is an excellent first mandolin and has raised my interest in the instrument.
I have played some slightly more expensive mandolins and I would say they are not 2-300£/¤ better than this and would wait to save more money to buy a ?much better? mandolin (if that makes sense?) ? [By the way the mid-price mandolins I tried were very good, but I?m trying to demonstrate how good my model seems to be].
Just a few of things, buy a tuner, buy a gig bag, buy a chord book and a song book. These can all be had for under £/¤100 if you chose well.

If this is your first mandolin, you are not going to be disappointed. It's fairly well made for the price, though the finish, especially the edging does have several imperfections, and I've seen better tuners on home made cigar box guitars.

It will require a good setup to get the best from it, but the intonation and playability right from the start were surprisingly reasonable. The sustain is also pretty good.

This mandolin has a bright and well projected sound, and physically it looks pleasing enough.

My only real issue with it is the quality of the tuners. They seem to suffer from 'loose spots', which makes fine tuning awkward.

With that said, if it splintered into a thousand pieces tomorrow - I would still buy another one.

It arrived quickly and very well packaged in a huge box - Thomann never disappoints. (Though I had hoped maybe the orders were mixed and I'd been sent a cello when I saw the size of the box!)

So I had this thing for about two weeks and then suddenly the neck started coming away. Since then I've had it sitting around for nearly 5 years until I decided to see if I could get it fixed. What I found was that unlike I'd feared, the neck was not in fact broken, but that it just hadn't been glued in sufficiently and had simply started coming away at the joint. I suppose they thought that the string tension would be enough to hold it in, not banking on the moment effect of the strings pulling the joint upwards. Anyway, I fixed it with a fair amount of wood glue and now it seems to be great. I guess it's only cheap and now I've got a perfectly working mandolin, but it's still a little annoying and not what I expect from Thomman's stuff, which is usually top notch. Also the way the strings are strung on the bridge makes them really fiddly to replace because you have to get a certain amount of tension on them before they'll stay on.
So would I recommend it? Honestly, I think even with the neck problems it's worth it for the price. Just make sure to have some wood glue and clamps ready...

Harley Benton HBMA-50 Mandoline VS is amazing for the money. Bought as an impulse purchase and now proudly in my collection of instruments. Ideal for a beginner or someone looking for an A-shape mandolin for travelling/festivals. If you're looking to learn seriously I would recommend purchasing a mid range upmarket model. I was pleasantly surprised with this purchase and recommend.

Pros:
- Spruce top, basswood body, teak neck, rosewood fretboard are surprising high quality.
- Rosewood Saddle is great.
- Attractive instrument

Cons:
- Finishing patchy and not perfect at times.
- String only "okay", if possible change

I have never played a mandolin before , but have played everything but (electric , acoustic , resonators , banjo's) for over 50 years , I thought I'd try a mandolin . I was impressed with the Harley Benton mandolin , it looked well made the finish was impressive . It came with no paperwork user manual nothing ! I emailed Thomann to say there was no user instructions all it had was a 4mm hex key , I received no reply . Ok no big deal , I bought a generic mandolin book and tuned it to a standard EAGD and for two weeks tried with little success to play the little beauty , despite that I have played guitars of all types I could not play this mandolin ! I took the mandolin to a music shop in a Colchester (I live in the middle of nowhere) who tried the mandolin an pronounce it unplayable. I left it with them and a week later picked up a mandolin that was so laughably easy to play and a bill for £100.00 , the string height at the middle fret was 2mm too heigh , the nut was 0.75mm too high the bridge was too high and needed to be reset and intonation adjusted and the neck truss rod needed to be slackened as the neck was "bowed" . At the end of all this would I buy this mandolin again ? Yes even though it cost nearly twice the price of the mandolin to setup I have an instrument I love to play .