Harley Benton HBO-850SB

My HBO-850 came when promised and has been a real pleasure to play the last 2 weeks. This guitar really does look good and the finish was great. A real close inspection showed 1 teeny-weeny-weeny blemish under the lacquer but I need my reading glasses on to see it! The frets were prepared well, the neck was setup perfectly with just the slightest amount of relief in it. The guitar does get you close to that Ovation sound from my experience of playing them in shops. It perhaps lacks a little depth compared with the real thing but this gives you a powerful sound for a shallow bowl body. I didn't buy this to use through a PA or a DI but can tell you the pick ups work and the preamp gives a good degree of control but the default sound of the piezo pickup is BRIGHT so you will be taming it with a heavy cut to the mids. All the pros I have listed here make this a clear winner I am happy to recommend.

The cons are small and should not put you off unless you believe you can get a truly perfect guitar for less than a ton. Firstly the string action at the 12th fret was well over 2mm from 1st to 6th strings. Bar chords from 7th position up were therefore a bit tiresome and solo playing required some good technique! An hour working on the bridge with some 120 grit paper and refitting it to the guitar a couple of times to try it out has resulted in a perfectly fine setup for what I want with no rattles/buzzing and could go lower if needed. An upgrade I will try is a quality bone bridge (a Tusq bridge might make this even brighter and that may not be a good thing), Strings are fine and having played them in have lost some of the sharpness but I will invest in some coated strings for its next set. The finger board is just the slightest bit 'rough' on some fret positions so you feel the grain resisting the string if/as you bend it. Over time that raised grain will wear down naturally but I will see what some lemon oil after a light brush along the grain with steel wool will do to this.

My first experience of Thoman's in house brand has been good and I have since ordered a GS Travel mini for my daughter and had it delivered to her Uni abroad rather than take her Taylor equivalent (at 7 times the price!) with her.

I ordered this guitar several reasons. The most important reason was that the Thomann website said that the nut width was 45 mm. But when I received the guitar I measured the nut width and it was 43 mm, so that was a disappointment.

Another disappointment was with the tuning keys. I started playing the guitar right out of the box and it was very nice, but the strings on it were old and dirty and I also noticed that there was some corrosion on the base of one of the tuning keys. So, I decided to change the strings and as I was doing that I realized one of the tuning keys did not work. The tuning key for the D string did not hold tension so I could tune, whenever I turned the key it would release the tension and the string cannot be tuned. I took the guitar to a local luthier who told me that the tuning keys were dead and I had to buy a set of new tuning keys and have them installed by a luthier, which cost money.

These were major disappointments, but the guitar has a nice tone and overall OK for the price. But of course it would have been much better without the above problems.

I bought this guitar as an alternative to miking an acoustic up and it does a pretty good job. It's feedback-free at high volume and sounds pretty true to an ovation.
There were one or two issues out of the box. The fretboard was very dry and needed a lot of oil to rehydrate it and the frets were very scratchy, but if you spend an hour polishing them the results are good, there were no deep scratches, only superficial roughness.
Also, the action was quite high 2.5mm at the top 'e' and 3mm at the bottom 'E', I had to remove the bridge (it came out without problem) and sand it down to my preference.

After I had set the guitar up it played well and it's a nice easy playing good-sounding instrument, especially at this price point.

If you have the know-how it's quite easy to get this guitar to a good standard, if not, you may have to spend a little more to have a decent playing instrument.

For the price, I'd recommend it.

I like the style and design of the guitar (like an Ovation), I’m an at home player with family for my audience.

The only thing I can say negative about the guitar is the sliver left in my finger from somewhere near the sound holes.

Tuning and staying in tune, I find it to be like most of my prior purchases of HB electrics. It holds tune well, typically 5 out of 6 strings are fine.

I will say I’m not a big fan of the round back, that’s on me not on the guitar. It doesn’t affect my playing but it does feel a little off and less stable sitting on my leg, but that’s something you never know until you try it. I can assume/hope it will get better as I get better, play it more and become more accustomed to the round back style.

I have only used the electronics a couple of times and found no issues and it sounds great. At least to my untrained ear I should add.

If you want a nice guitar and don’t want to pay the big $$ this is certainly a great option.

Bought: March 2019
It was already tuned straight out of the box, and hasn't required much tuning since.

It sounds 'bright' with flat/0 eq settings, and has sufficient low end for rich-sounding chords. Barres are no problem and everything sounds good. Easy access to the battery compartment.

Action was a little high but didn't affect fretting, and QC was good all round, with no bad frets or imperfections in the body/neck.

The bowl back feels comfortable

This is my new 'go-to' acoustic out of my set. I know I can pick it up and trust it's good.