Harley Benton BJU-15Pro Banjo Ukulele

I’ve been playing the banjolele, Formby style for over ten years. This one caught my eye due to the price and other reviews that I head read. It are within a couple of days of the order being placed. I was very pleasantly surprised with how this looked in real life.The quality was really good, well made and beautifully finished. There were no rough fret ends and the neck was aligned very nicely. The open backed tuners worked as they should once the strings had settled. The sound with the plastic remo head wasn’t to my liking and so I replaced it with a calf skin vellum which transformed it, giving it a much warmer tone. This is a very loud instrument and one which projects really well due to the bowl back resonator. To be honest once you have it set up for your style of playing you really can’t go wrong. I gave it four stars as I felt that a better quality tuning peg would have been nice ,not that the ones supplied don’t do there job very well and I felt the remo head let it down on tone. That said both are relatively cheap fixes for a really great piece of kit. So all in all ,turned out nice again.

This is a great instrument to play and can fill a room with very little amplification. In fact, I did a gig last night and didn't need any amplification at all.

This is a heavy instrument and therefore I would recommend either playing it sitting down or investing in a suitable strap. Unfortunately this does not come with any brackets so these would need to be added manually.

Secondly, you'd best buy an extra set of strings. Ukulele strings are held at the bridge using a simple knot made with an additional wrap-around to double the size of said knot. However Mr. Benton must not have had the time to do this. Upon inspection I realised that there is not much room to improve matters on the strings in place. Therefore, the only solution available until Mr. Benton improves his knots is to order a new set of strings.

Overall this is a good instrument with a good sound. With the above issues taken into consideration you will not encounter any issues.