Harley Benton CLP-15ME SolidWood

Pros:
The guitar is a solid body guitar for a great price. That's the main selling point here. It also looks good from a distance.

Cons:
- The finish on the guitar has many dust particles under it, making the surface a lot less smooth to the touch. This is to be expected for an instrument at this price, as it is difficult to keep the guitars dust free in a factory environment.
- The tuning pegs are cheap, and they have a bit of dead space in them.
- The nut is cut poorly, and the strings are both too high, and there the slots are too narrow giving a lot of binding. Some pencil will help with the binding, but really the guitar needs professional work for most players.
- Harley Benton uses the same saddles for everything it seems, and because this has an under-saddle pickup, the string height came in at a mile-high 3.25 mm. Now, you always expect the guitar to come in with slightly too high action from the factory, but 3.25 mm. will be unplayable for most. I sanded it down to spec 2.25, and the guitar plays a lot better.
- However, there is now some minor buzz in the upper registers of the guitar, as the fretwork also isn't perfect.
- The fretboard gives off grey residue on fingers. This is likely the result of the fretboard having been painted darker. I'm not a hundred percent sure of this is the reason, but nevertheless your fingers will be grey after playing. This should alleviate on its own in time.

The conclusion is that this guitar will work fine, and has a nice sound for the price, but you will need to do some work to make it playable, and if you're not able to sand down your saddle and cut the nut, it will probably need some professional work which will add significantly to the price. In the end, the guitar is fair for its price, but has a lot of minuses, which frankly any guitar at this price is likely to have.

This solid wood parlour guitar is just so well made. I've been playing since the 60's, mostly electric guitar but the last few years I've changed tack and play ragtime and slide guitar using parlour sized guitars with 12th fret body joints. I use a Gretsch boxcar, an Alvarez MPA66SHB Masterworks parlours mostly and needed another parlour to maybe play slide on.

Out of the box the Harley Benton CLP-15ME SolidWood is set up really well, the action is just right. The nut is a tad high but perfect for slide playing, If you're into finger picking then having the nut slots lowered a tiny bit would be a good idea, that's not a criticism of the guitar as most players learn how to tweak guitars to their playing style and it's best to have the nut slightly high rather than low so adjustments are possible. The 45mm nut width is much better than the cramped 43mm nuts used on most other guitars, a real plus in my view.

The build is just so good, the kneck is set into the body perfectly flat with no asymetry, often a killer fault with even big name guitars. With all new acoustic guitars that I check I apprehensively look at the neck heel joint first! The quality control is amazing, all the edges are smooth and very well done, bridge and headstock are very nicely finished. The tuners work smoothly and hold pitch. I've not plugged in the Fishman Presys II as it's not something I need but the tuner fuction is very handy.

I've made quite a few guitars over the years and have done re-frets for other people and this guitar is seriously good and at a bargain price too, half the price of my Alverez and Gretsch guitars. Normally at around the £250 mark you get ply construction with a spruce top, not a bad thing in itself and there are some great ply guitars out there, think early black label Yamahas, but I do like all solid wood guitars.

This Harley Benton is just so good, looking at Youtube the brand is starting to get a very good name for itself with its high build quality. It's a pleasure to play and I really recommend this parlour guitar, go for it!