Harley Benton CLA-15CE Java Exotic Reviews

Great tone and sound

This guitar plays louder and clearer than I expected. The tone is beyond expectations.

Superb guitar

Great sounding, and very well made and finished guitar, let down only really by the mediocre tuners. Feature wise it is all there, with a reasonable sounding fishman presys too. The build quality is massively improved over earlier HB's. The guitar sounds very good, expecially considering it has a pretty typical laminate construction and is of a reasonably compact body size. The veneer top looks nice (personal taste of course) and the entire guitar has a satin finish that feels lovely in hand.

The guitar arrived with a decent truss setting, though the action was about 5mm at the 12th. I have cut down the bridge (bone btw) but we start to hear too much buzz once down to about 3mm at the 12th. When the strings need changing next I will level and recrown the frets, and tweak the nut (bone again) to get the action down a bit more and improve playability. Fret edges were surprisingly neat but could do with a bit more rounding if I was being fussy.

Overall its a great guitar, and not just for the money either. It's an all-round nice guitar that could easily be confused with something way above its price point if you were to cover the headstock. The Koa model sounds even better, though I bought this for my partner as she prefered the look of the top. In comparison, The Java version has a bit more of a hollow midrange to it than the koa, and is not quite as dark and warm as the full gaboon ('mahogany') version.

Recommended. :)