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!

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!)

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 .