Harley Benton HBMA-50 Mandoline BK

I bought this mandolin to take something with me when I'm traveling.
Lets start with the bad:
There are so many flaws I wont be able to list them all. paint/finish is bad. Many chips, uneven lines on "binding". Rough nut. Some screws are screwed in bad angles so they stick out a bit from body. When it comes to the wood - it is built from all kinds of leftovers. you really don't want to look inside the soundholes. :) Neck is beyond any repairs - it has a weird angle and its warped a bit. truss rod wont fix this. But the good thing is that its playable up to 12th fret and the intonation is alright.
The good:
It somehow stays in one piece and actually sounds ok. Put in some decent strings and it will sound nice. The fretboard is playable up to 12th fret (anything above that - not so good though...). The bridge is adjustable and is a good quality one. at least on mine.
Overall I am satisfied. For the price I paid I got what I needed - a mandolin that sounds good and that I can take on my bicycle and go anywhere without feeling sorry for it getting damaged.

I bought it for fun because I always wanted to have a mandolin (or an Irish bouzouki which was too expensive..) and I hadn't too much of professional demands towards such an instrument. So I decided to go for a cheaper one and ended up with the Harley Benton HBMA-50 and was surprised when I got it. The overall quality was really great (for the price!) and there was nothing to complain about. No sharp frets, no rattling stuff - really usable cheap mandolin. If it weren't for the strings. Those delivered on the instrument were black. I mean really black. The wounded and the plain ones. Incredible how old they must have been.

I ordered new ones and 'Hello World' there was this typical mandolin sound. Bright, small, shimmering. Wonderful. Okay, it's missing the definition and fine treble of more expensive instruments. It sounds a little bit 'rough' if you want to say so. But for an instrument I bought just for fun from time to time or record a melody it's perfectly fine. If you want to learn mandolin seriously I recommend buying something 'better' (and I mean better, not just more expensive) for everyone else or experimenting it's a wonderful chance of gambling around with a mandolin.

When i first got the mandolin i would say i was pleasantly suprised. I think the colour and finish of the body was bright, and it had a fair amount of depth.
The hardware, mainly the tuning pegs feel and look a little cheap, but they do the job. I'm sure you could upgrade these if you really wanted to.
I sanded a little round the bridge, tightened truss rod, and put on new strings to get the mandolin closer to my taste.
I think the acoustic sound of the mandolin is pretty good. Quite woody, and sparkly, especially when the strings were changed.
The amplified tone of the instrument is again not bad. I plugged in and played into my soundcard without issue.
Overall i would say for the price it is pretty good. I don't think it's fair to compare this to mandolins which cost 5 or 10 times as much. Of course they will be 'better'. I did make a few adjustments because i am an experienced musician and felt they would benefit me, and make it easier to play.
I think if you want to try out a mandolin, and don't want to break the bank doing it, this is a good product to start with.

First off, at this price point you won't be getting the greatest mandolin ever crafted. However, if you are looking at dipping your toes into new territory without spending hard money - you can't really complain with what you get here.

Tuning stability is alright, you'll be tuning up semi-regularly but not so much that it'll be an annoyance. Quality for the price is very good, hardware is functional, body is strong enough to take some hard playing. I've had this about a year or two now and nothing has broken off.

Overall, for the price of checking out another stringed instrument you cant go wrong. If you're looking at using this in a professional setting I'd recommend spending a little more for something that'll hold its tuning better.

I had to lower the action, replace strings, add some felt padding to the end piece, add grommets to suppress harmonics behind the bridge and sand the bridge flush to the body to make it sing, but it sounds decent out of the box, the truss rod was set correctly, however the action was way too high on the bridge end.
A setup leaflet would be a handy addition. The fit and finish is not great, but more than acceptable at this price range. Once it's tuned up and the strings had time to settle in, it is keeping in tune surprisingly well and sounds OK for a tryout instrument.

Recommended if you have the aptitude to do some setup.