Harley Benton ST-20HSS SBK Standard Series

Fantastic quality for the price. Things aren't perfect though and you will find manufacturing imperfections in a lot of places. But the fit and finish was passable everywhere on my guitar when it arrived, though the nut was filed down too much on a few strings and the action needed adjustments. I swapped for a cheap HB nut and it was a disaster so had to redo it again with a Graph Tech TUSQ XL one (PT-5042-00 works fine after sanding it down). I also upgraded to HB locking tuners, HB strap locks and Graph Tech string trees. The fretwork looks okay and all notes are playable. I've polished the frets and also the fingerboard needed some oil for moisture and a good cleaning on mine. With this it's turning from a super cheap guitar I'm going to use while traveling to something really nice both to look at AND play! Mind you the electronics and pickups are not great but they do an OK job. They're of course muffled and cheap sounding next to for example my PRS SE Custom 24 but on it's own I can get enjoyable sounds out of the guitar and now it works great as well. The Humbucker and single coil combo is very versatile. Highly recommend these guitars, especially if you want to get into working on guitars changing hardware and practicing on doing setups yourself. For me it's been a joy and now I'm ready to do setups and minor adjustments on my more expensive guitars as well.

As the title say, reallyyy great value for money.
I bought this guitar without knowing what to expect nor did I have an idea what I was doing. I saw it, liked how it looked, bought it.
It arrived fairly quickly, it was well packaged.
Now the pros and cons for me as a beginner:
Lets start with the negatives first:
Out of the box:
1.The action was high, really high.
2.Intonation was all over the place.
3.Not shielded.
“What I learnd is that these are things to expect even with more expensive guitars. “
But I got it set up. The cons after the setup:
1.The mid pickup was…meh
2. Use the whammy bar too much and it will get out of tune.
3. Not really a con imo, but the tuners are not great. But they held the tuning very well on the guitar I got, tho as I said too much use of the whammy bar and it will get out of tune.
Now the good stuff. The pros:
1. Frets were polished.
2. No sharp fret ends whatsoever
3. Perfect finish.
4. Looks great in person.
5.the bridge humbucker on the one I got sounding reaaaallly good. I played metal on it and it handled the distortion very well. I still prefer the humbucker on this one than the one on my other Harley Benton active.
6. The neck single coil sounded really good too!
7.Versatile.
8. Good sustain.
9. Smooth to play and makes you wanna practice more. Which is a plus.
10. Comfortable neck profile.
I absolutely recommend this beauty!
Its a great beginner great with greater possibilities for upgrading as YOU get better.