Harley Benton HBO-600NT

So… i have had my share of expensive and midrange steel string acoustics and had to conclude that acoustics would never become my thing. Always trouble with hard strings, stupid bridges that was unable to intonate, impossible truss rods, too high string action…. You know what i mean….
But for this price i was prepared to try it.
First of all it pretty nice to look at, it is built ok, without impressing, but the factory strings was a waste of natural ressources. .
New strings, a slight adjusment on the truss rod and this thing plays its heart out. The action is spot on, the intonation is spot on, the weight is spot on and the tuners are actually not as bad as i feared… The craftsmanship is absolutely accepted as well as the tuners.
But the round back shape makes it extremely difficult to sit with the guitar.
The fretboard was extremely dry, but it still played very well. Easy fixed though…
The acoustic tone is very nice and clear, but if something should be opgraded it wound be the electronics. The amplification of the built in preamp is very low but it sounds ok…. Nothing fantastic but enough for home play. In the studio the acoustic tone is absolutely acceptable, but dont use the preamp….

With thin strings and a very light adjustment this cheap guitar definately has taken my heart.
All i need to do now is to polish the frets which are very rough, and sand a little on the rough wood a few places. Then we are good to go live…. Later i might upgrade the tuners.
If i miss something it should be a a tuner in the preamp section.

Giant recommandation for this absurd low price….
The four stars are for the parameters listed and i have not taken the price into consideration !!

I now have 5 Harley Bentons, and until now I have not been disappointed . Okay it’s a cheap guitar , I paid more for shipping, duty and taxes then I did for the guitar. Now normally when you pay this little for a guitar the expectations are very low and to be honest I wouldn’t even bother . However with Harley Benton I have come to just be amazed at what you get for the money, but this guitar follows the norm …not the Harley Benton norm though . First off the frets were really sharp an dirty , making the guitar almost unplayable , they were really bad , the neck was dry, and there was this blob of something on the high E string, which just ended up breaking with a 1/2 a turn of the tuner. Now I wasn’t expecting much in the way of sound due to the style , but this sounded just terrible and plays even worse. I’m hoping with a full change to some quality strings maybe to a lighter gauge 10 ‘s maybe , along with the frets filed and some neck work , it might make this a more playable guitar , otherwise it’s just going to be a wall hanger.
The finish is very nice , best thing about it unfortunately. It really is a nice looking guitar, which makes this even more disappointing . I just wish it was up to the Harley Benton quality I’ve come to love, respect and expect. O well can’t win them all.
UPDATE: After spending some time on the neck, filing , polishing and oiling then replacing the strings with Martin MA170 extra light 10-47,80/20 bronze , yes these are cheap Martin strings , but a great match with this guitar. This is now a totally different instrument , so much better and the sound is really nice, it has now gone from a wall hanger to a player.
Update 2 : pre amp quit working after about a year, almost to the day! tried new battery, nothing, even pulled it out it to see if a wire came loose, nope all good there, its just dead. Checked in with Thomann, and its just been a series of emails back and forth and then asked to send a video on the issue, I guess they need proof, okay did that. Now I wait for the outcome, stand by.
Update 3: In the spirit of being fair I have deleted previous comments and updated my review as they have shipped me a new pre amp. I now wait for it to arrive, but it took a few e mails asking for an update. In the end they stood behind the warranty which is great considering the quality of this guitar. Lets face it, in at least this case , you get what you pay for.

My first guitar was an Ovation Balladeer which I got as a birthday present in 1980. I have owned scores of U.S.A. and Asian made super-shallow bowl Ovations over the years. I was set to buy another when I came across a video by one Tomek Stężalski on YouTube in which a Harley Benton HBO 600 is compared to an Ovation costing several times more.

Through my headphones, the HBO 600 was a better Ovation than the Ovation was.

As inexpensive as the HBO 600 is, my expectations were frankly not very high.

What I received exceeded those expectations.

My instrument delivered to me in flawless, blemish-free condition. The only other Asian made Ovation I've had with no blemish from new was a late 1980's Korean made Celebrity model. The HBO 600 I received was up to that standard of build quality.

Even the inside of the bowl was neat and tidy and more so than even some US made super-shallows I've had over the years.

The setup, out of the box, was perfect. That's not hyperbole. This instrument shipped set up to have the neck relief, string height at 1st and 12th frets, that I would have adjusted it to had it not already been "dialed in."

No fret sprout. No need to dress fret ends or polish frets.

The only adjustment I had to make was the spacing between the D and G strings and the application of lemon oil to an overly dry fingerboard.

It was literally as perfect as one can imagine human hands and machines being able to make such a thing. It looked like an Ovation. It was built as well as the better ones I've had. It practically plays itself like the better Ovations I've had did. And it sounds exactly like these things are supposed to.

I like Roundbacks because the good ones have very even volume and sustain response up, down, and across the board, with no dead spots or wolf tone areas, and they respond well to variations in picking attack.

They don't sound like Martins. They don't sound like Taylors.

They sound like Ovations. Thank God. It's a balanced tone that sounds great on record with nothing more exotic than an SM-57 microphone. And they don't run out of volume or sustain when your brain takes you to what is the "dusty end" of the fingerboard on most acoustic guitars.

That's what my HBO 600 NT sounds like.... It sounds like the best super-shallow Ovations I've had did. And mine came out of the box with a better set-up than ANY Ovation I've ever had.

Ah, but all is not sweetness and light.......

The plugged in sound was a disappointment. A major, massive, horrible disappointment.

Then, on day two of owning the instrument, it wasn't a disappointment, anymore, because there was no plugged in sound to be disappointed by. The preamp died.

Thomman, of course, offered to make things right. I elected to take matters into my own hands, though. I bought a new Belcat 505 preamp for less than ten bucks from Amazon and had it swapped into the guitar in less than a half of an hour.

As delivered, my HB 600 NT was nearly impossible to get a useable plugged in sound with before the preamp totally died.

With a properly functioning preamp, though, I got a very good sound with the instrument EQ centered on all three bands, the instrument volume at 3/4, and the EQ on the Trace Elliott model of my Peavey Vypyr set flat.

Lush chords...... Piano-like lead lines with long sustain for an acoustic guitar... And tweaking EQ just made things better from there.

It's one of the best "Ovations" I've ever had over decades of playing them and my favorite of the lot due to how spot on it was set up right out of the box.

How it is possible to get this much of what some of us still love about Ovation guitars for so little money is mind-boggling to me, but there it is. Mine isn't just a good guitar for the money. It's a great guitar, period.

I absolutely could not possibly be more pleased.

I was searching for affordable acoustic guitar for camping, and as I'm used to play on electric guitar I wanted to have fast and smooth neck, with a cut to higher frets..
Already have Fender CD60, but never liked her neck and playability.

Sound on HB 600 is a little bit high and thin, when compared to full body dreadnought Fender CD60. But it is loud enough, little bit short on lows, which is expected on roundback slim body guitar like this. And of course like any other roundback guitar, it will tend to slide from you if there is no strap around sholders. Back surface is not slippery, but guitar will slide a little, it is just phisycs.
Sound through preamp is kind of "sinthetyc", like in all affordable electro-acoustic guitars. If one needs a good sound for amp, maybe it is better solution to buy decent acoustic pickup like SD Woody or simmilar.
One more thing that needs some attention, are the frets. They need a good and thorough polishing, because they are rough. Also the fretboard needs some oil, as it is very dry out of the box.
But taking in consideration low price of guitar, in my opinion it still worth the money...and even more..

Now the good points. After polishing, oiling, changing strings to 9-46, and some truss rod adjustment, this is completely diferent guitar. Neck is fast and playable, joy to playing. Action is even lower than on some of my electric guitars, octaves are 100% set.

Guitar also looks very nice, and for now guitar stays in tune. There is no point of comparing it to Ovation of course, but in my opinion you will get more than you paid for.