I own a CLA-16S which sounds great, and there were no issues with the CLA-15M SolidWood I owned either, but this particular one seems to have been a dud.
Pros:
- Great body shape with nice punch
- The finishing is well above and beyond what you can expect at this price range
- I was fortunate with the aesthetics on my guitar, there are no knots or blemishes on the wood itself and the grain looks great.
- I don't like bound fretboards, but it perfectly matches the fretboard on my guitar so I didn't notice it until I did my first restring.
- The factory setup was fine. I had to turn the trussrod when I switched strings the first time, but once that was in place, the action was great without any further adjustments.
- The tuners work great.
With that out of the way, here are the cons:
- The nut is cut too deep, so it grips the strings. I replaced it with a tusq nut (which needed shimming because the tusq nut isn't tall enough). Tuning stability is great after switching the nut, and since the first nut was cut so well, I didn't need to do any gradual adjustments, I just copied the factory nut straight up.
- The strings supplied with the guitar are terrible. It says on the product page they're .012 strings, but they felt like .010 strings.
- Supporting that notion, once I restrung the guitar with proper .012 strings, the softness of the neck was revealed. It completely bowed and I had to adjust the trussrod a lot. It feels like the truss rod isn't just stabilizing the neck, but completely supporting it. This piece of wood should not have been chosen for a steel-stringed guitar.
And finally the most important con: My specific guitar seems to have some issues with the sound board, and there are a lot of harsh harmonics and rattling when I play hard, almost as if the lid was cedar, and not spruce. I thought it was the strings first, but now after having tried three different brands and finally tying and waxing the ball ends but still having issues with distortion-like resonance, I don't see what else it can be, than the guitar itself.
Since wood grading is not completely haphazard, I think you can expect similar issues with your guitar.
If you're a quiet player, or you play with lighter gauge strings, this guitar is exemplary. It has the high-end response you usually don't get with plywood guitars in this price range, and the body shape is great for light strumming and soft picking.
If you're a harder playing guitarist or you like regular or medium string tensions... you could order a couple guitars of this make for the price of a more expensive guitar and hope for the best, or you could just straight up buy one of those more expensive guitars, or look elsewhere, like the budget offerings from Cort and Ibanez. Yamaha is a good option too if you have a guitar tech handy, and of course the other Harley Benton offerings with solid wood soundboards.
