Harley Benton UK-11C Brown

This Harley Benton concert ukulele is a good instrument for its price range. Though the sound is good and feels solidly built when I have played it, it may not hold for rougher handling/touring or outdoor playing for a prolonged timespan. For me, it seems more fit for indoor playing, although I have not tested it in other conditions.

The body of the ukulele feels sturdy and it plays in tune, but the wood feels slightly unpolished and rough. This however does not seem to impact the tone and sound. The frets sticks out a tiny bit from the fingerboard, but this does not impact playing like it would have on a guitar, because the side of your index finger does not touch the fingerboard when playing ukulele. The tuning pegs also feels sturdy and hold the tuning reasonably well, even after the first tuning, although may go off tuning with big temperature changes.

This ukulele seems to project more than a regular ukulele, but not overly so. The sound is strong, the timbre is maybe somewhat darker than a normal ukulele, but the differance is minimal. The strings that come with does however seem flimsy, so they might need changing after some time of playing, maybe a year or two. Strings in a stronger material would probably make the instrument speak more, but if you prefer a more soft and mellow tone the original strings will work, as they seem to be in a softer material.

All-in-all it is a good intrument in its price range, and a good pick for your first ukulele and for the home studio, but perhaps not for professional touring gigs.

Use: Uke beginner - to use uke at home and amongst friends

Clarity: 11C Uke is pretty decent in quality and good to great in sound output. It managed to get the nice soft tones as well as hard pick sounds pretty well. Been using this for a month now and it gets better each time I play it.

Pros & Cons:
What I liked about this uke is that it comes at a minimal price tag, and gives you a good head start in your learning. It doesn't disappoint.

What I disliked about it is the build quality of this uke (but that is expected from a low priced equipment, anyway). When the forearm friction rubs the body of the uke, the wood abrasion is making it bit rough. But that is again minimal or piece-by-piece, I believe.

Comprehensibility:
Good buy for a beginner. Think no further.

I'm a guitarist who wanted a ukulele to see how I liked the instrument so I ordered this, I chose Concert over a Soprano because I prefer the slightly warmer sound and larger range if I ever wanted to use it. I've played ukulele's before but never owned one, here's what I liked and what I didn't:

The Pros:
- The sound is awesome, exactly what I was looking for!
- The setup out of the box was excellent and it was very playable (this is rare in this price point in my experience)
- It looks beautiful
- The cheap case is a nice addition

The cons:
- The fretboard was really dried out, but a little bit of lemon oil fixed that
- Kept losing tune initially, but once the strings are stretched out it holds tune ok but needs a slight adjustment after every session, nothing extreme
- Intonation beyond the 12th fret is not accurate, but only +15 cents so it's not terrible
- Frets are really rough and need to be polished, but can be done yourself

Overall a super purchase, for the money I'm very happy with it. For most people and use cases, this is an excellent Ukulele for the price!

Harley benton has made some pretty great affordable guitars and I decided to give their Ukelele a try. let's start with the things that don't work properly first.

The neck is not dimension the same from the first to last fret, there's bumpy spots on the neck that one could easily feel when playing.

The tuners were cheap and also resonated with the open C string which rattles all the parts in the tuners and is louder than the actual sound of the instrument.

The finish is incredibility cheap, some of the stains were already rubbing off from just shipping and me tuning it. Might need to tung oil the whole instrument so it last longer than a week.

As for the good things what can you say about a 20 dollar ukelele, it plays, it gets in tune (but does not stay in tune) and should suffice for a child.

I would buy just to mess around with a cheap instrument. Not as good as most of their guitars and bass though so don't buy it expecting the same quality on their other string instruments.

I've been playing electric guitar for 8 years now and I decided it's time to get a ukulele. I picked a Harley Benton as I already had a positive experience with their electric guitars.

I'm going to rate this as if it was a guitar as I am no ukulele player (yet).

Build quality is pretty good. Fret edges are a little sharp but since the neck is so small i basically never come in contact with them, so not an issue.
Tuners are decent. I had trouble keeping it in tune at first (it kept going flat) but I believe that was because of the new strings stretching. It does stay in tune now so it was just the strings, and the tuners work fine.

Sound quality is good. Again, I come from the world of electric guitars so I don't have much to compare it to. It sounds fairly smooth, loud enough so that you can sing over it at a decent volume but not quite as loud as an acoustic guitar, it's somewhat in between a solidbody electric guitar (unplugged) and an acoustic guitar.

Overall I would recommend it if you want to get into ukuleles, very fun to play and doesn't cost much.

I actually bought this and the brown one, one each, for my two toddler grandchildren because they seemed to love my ukulele. They are rough on a ukulele and I didn't want to pay too much for something that was likely to get broken. Not only have they endured, the remain playable and stay in tune. Are they the best? Certainly not but I would recommend it if you don't know if you'd like to play and just want to try one. At this price I actually bought 4 so the two boys can have one at their house and one at our house. I pick the ukuleles up every now and then to see how they are doing and with minor tuning they are great every time. If you're a serious player you obviously know these are really inexpensive and and not something you'd want to play proudly but I'd play them in a pinch any time. Thanks Thomann.