Harley Benton CLD-15CE Koa Exotic 4-stars Reviews

A great guitar, with a few small downsides.

The guitar itself is beautiful and well crafted, the Koa top really sets it off and the whole thing has a pleasing weight to it. The neck shape is interesting, I'd equate it to a modern C shape with a slight flatness to the back of it, giving it a slim feel while still filling the hand up nicely. The fret surfaces were good enough for me, there were no sharp fret ends and the setup out of the box was perfect however I quickly changed the strings for Elixirs which REALLY brought this guitar to life.

The preamp is very capable and sounds great however it does not have an auto-off function and I find myself having to replace the battery a lot because of this. I also don't particularly enjoy this style of tuning function and much prefer a meter display as opposed to this one which only displays the note played with small arrows pointing left and right to show if you are tuned too high or low. There is also only one strap button on the bottom of the guitar which is a minor gripe but the missing button is something I miss as all my other acoustics have 2 strap buttons.

At this price you would struggle to find a solid-top instrument of equal quality both in build and tone. I would recommend this guitar to anyone!