Harley Benton HBO-850 Classic Black

I own many guitars, but never had a classical or acoustic with integrated preamp and piezo pickups, so I wanted to give this one a go. At the moment of this review, I owned and used this instrument from time to time for a bit more than one year. Note that I own over 20 guitars and perform luthier work such as setups.

Unfortunately, this instrument falls short on many points.
- The guitar is a nightmare to tune.
- The neck is not stable enough, even though the strings are nylon, so every temperature change becomes quite problematic.
- The guitar just wont stay in tune. The tuners are mainly at fault here, and are mediocre at best. You cannot play a song without having to tune
- The finish is average, as there are marks and imperfections here and there, as well as glue residues.
- Intonation is not spot on, but at this price it's good enough, and the neck precision is decent.

The preamp feature is very nice and seems good, but that's not enough to compensate for the other major defects.

Overall, even at that price point I cannot recommend this guitar.

It is especially not suitable for beginners, especially as they do not have the guitar skills to further compensate the quality and build deficiencies.