Harley Benton HBO-600BK

I am an electric guitar player who has studiously avoided acoustics all my life, but decided I needed a bit of a technique 'baptism of fire' (you can get away with quite a bit on an electric with the gain and volume up!) so decided to go for an inexpensive acoustic to see how I got on.

I had my eye on an Ovation super shallow guitar, basically because they are nice and thin, like and electric and the neck is very similar to an electric guitar. I have always found that trying to play some acoustics is a bit like hugging a box... not really comfortable. Ovations are quite pricey though, and I was left wondering what new electric I could add to my collection for the price of one of those. Then I saw this, which is practically identical to an Ovation Applause.

I really like this guitar. It had a few finish issues - black paint smudges on the binding etc, and the action was a bit too high for me but it sounds lovely. And for the price, I can't really complain about the odd tiny flaw. The neck is great too.... matte finished and easy to play. Fingerboard looks really good quality too. I have heard people say roundbacks are not brilliant plugged in but I have other guitars to plug in, and will be just using this acoustically for practice, so it doesn't bother me at all if that is the case. I think it looks very smart too. Roundback guitars also tend to be a bit more robust than all-wood ones, which is good for me because I have already dropped this a few times....! Not a mark or ding anywhere!

So, in short, if you want a nice guitar, which isn't going to fall apart on you, will look and sound lovely and have people wanting to have a try out of it, then this is for you. Excellent guitar for the price.

My first guitar was a single-cut classical body with steel strings made by a local luthier. When I moved I bought a Fender Dreadnought.When I moved again I bought this one. Having owned two guitars and played many others I kne what I wanted before buying this one. The roundback makes it very comfortable to hold (the other two where square and larger) and the shallow body makes it ideal to practice either picking or struming without being too loud. It has 24 frets which is great if you want to hit high notes when playing a solo and the thin neck gives it a playability almost equal to an electric guitar.

It has a very nice sound throughout the whole range and the fact that it has an active piezo electric pickup with a 3-band equalizer makes it very versatile. It came perfectly setup and sounded great, but now it slightly buzzes on the 5th-6th strings and 1st-3rd frets, but it could be my playing as my brother tried it and it barely buzzed. It could also be that the weather is colder and it may need an slight adjuytmend on the thrus-rod.

It has an excellent finish with many details that only high end guitars have. The ring around the sound hole and the fret markers give it a beautiful look.The ring aroung the hole is not fully flat against the body, althout this is not a problem in the sound, nor playability and it doens't get stuck on anything; it just could be better. I would have preferred that the fret markers went all the way to fret 24 and not stop on fret 19.

Having said all that, if you want a guitar that will sound great and costs as little as you can find this is the one for you. You will not be disappointed.