Harley Benton Custom Line CLJ-45E VS

I'm a professional guitarist with more than 40 yrs experience on stage, I mean I gig every day and I have lots of guitars, from very expensive ones to cheap ones, I bought this one as an experiment but I've never been so amazed before with a cheap guitar like this. This one came out of the box just PERFECT ! It holds the tuning , the intonation all over the fretboard is truly accurate, the action is perfect, the sound is great, the pick up sounds great and enough for gigging, very light weight and fantastic resonance, frets feel perfect and tuning machines are truly acceptable. I only modify the grounding, like in almost all the guitars with piezo out there ( even expensive ones ) if you plug the guitar directly into a P-A. you can hear a quite loud hummmm noise. I always modify my acoustic guitars by simply running a cable from the GROUND pin at the output jack to the bridge making the cable touching the strings so when I'm playing while I'm touching the strings the ground noise will dissapear, just like an electric guitar would do... you can put some metal adhesive tape , like the one used in air condition that you can buy in your local chinesse shop, and tape a little strip between the pinholes and the saddles, covering the grounding cable you just installed so this metal tape will touch the strings and when you touch the strings you will have a very very quiet great sounding guitar, you're welcome !!! enjoy guys just buy it !!! :-)

After my first experience with a Harley Benton BZ-6000 (electric six string bass), I was a bit apprehensive.

Thankfully, this instrument is flawless. Really couldn't find any problems with it. Can't even think of something that could be done better. Its...I guess...perfect.

Fretwork is even, no rough edges at all. Binding and finish are perfect. The factory setup is very playable out of the box, not too high. The tuners seem to be well built and are responsive.

The on-board piezo pickup and preamp are surprisingly good. Sure, it is still a piezo at the end of the day and it will not sound like an LR Baggs or higher end mic-preamp system, but for a piezo, it is very usable. Stock strings sound great. The overall sound of the preamp is what pleased me the most. Compared it with Thomann's other guitars' sound samples, and there really is something slightly more organic to this one.

The acoustic sound itself is exquisite. The harmonics sound marvelous. I much prefer trying an instrument before buying it, so I was apprehensive about ordering online. But its absolutely superlative. I am very happy for now. Let's see how the neck and body behave over time.

Edit (07-07-2020): After a few months of owning and using this guitar, I thought it would be nice to make a couple of additions to my review. Firstly, the tuning keys feel like they are slightly fragile. Not sure if the tuning machines are also the same, they certainly don't feel/seem that way. Secondly, this guitar sounds amazing recorded on a proper mic, very balanced sound overall, very happy with that. Plays well, sounds great, and as of now, the neck and body have held properly (no warps on the neck or top).

I've always loved Harley Benton electric guitars, they are built and play great especially for the price. I took a chance and bought this acoustic thinking it would be at least HALFWAY built nicely, but nope- it's light as a feather, the wood is so thin it feels like a child's guitar, and the strings are about 2 inches off the fretboard. This guitar is still sitting in the box and packaging because Thoman decided that the guitar having small blemishes and not being setup correctly (or playable for that matter) means that I had to pay the import fees to return it. That's the last time I will ever buy another acoustic without playing it first. Really aggravated at the way Thoman handled this but oh well. If you're looking for a nice acoustic don't let the pictures of this one fool you, it's a piece of crap. Plain and simple.