GS-Travel-E Mahogany : An exceptional little guitar for the money (albeit with a couple of faults) Every home should have one

May I begin by saying I have quite a few Harley Benton guitars. All are great value and the more expensive (pro) ones are very good indeed.

So this is a little guitar at a lower price point than I would normally be drawn to. But at the price I thought it was worth a look. Taking into account that this guitar is not aimed at a pro, I’m still going to give my findings and honest opinion.

Straight out of the box it sounded full and clear for a guitar with a smaller body and scale length. The finish was flawless, however the frets were a little rough and the action a little high. Lowering the action exposed one slightly high fret over the body causing one accessible fret to choke out. Not a problem if you don’t play up that end or if you know how to fix it. (which I did) Other than that, all the other frets played perfectly and only needed a little polish to take away any roughness. The full V shaped neck is comfortable even if you find the fingerboard radius a little flat.

Electrically, the pickup and preamp sounded surprisingly good (and the preamp even has a tuner and phase switch), HOWEVER … there was a problem with the low E string volume. It just wasn’t being picked up at all. One should really do a return with something like this, but because I’d had issues with the DHL delivery of this item, and have had experience with the temperamental properties of PIZZO under bridge pickups, I decided to investigate myself. The pickup worked fine and was completely straight. The bridge saddle was totally flat on it’s underside (when I adjust the action on acoustics I ALWAYS file down the top of the saddle and reshape it because I know how problematic these pickups can be when the saddle isn’t totally flat). On further investigation, it appeared that the bottom of the slot where the saddle and pickup sit, was NOT flat. There were a couple of metal pins/screws showing and someone (in the factory presumably) had tried to machine them flush and slightly overdone it making a slight recess onto which the pickup could not make contact with the body. I managed to resolve this using slithers of paper to fill the indents. NOW it all works fine. … and it sounds good.

I am aware, this is aimed at maybe, buskers, backpackers and suchlike who might not care about the electrics, and I know I’m being very pernickety but I like to know all my guitars work properly. When an instrument is built so well, especially at this price point, it would be nice to know that I just got the exception to the rule and I was lucky to have the knowledge to fix it. For £109 this is an exceptional little guitar. If you get a good one, why pay 6x the price for the other brand that it’s a tribute to?