This is my second HB guitar having recently bought and *heavily* modified a little TE20 which I've had a great experience with to date. Owing to that previous experience I felt I had a pretty good idea of what I could expect from this guitar.
Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first: One of the tuners feels a bit wonky. The binding is a little messy in places, particularly around the "F" holes. The frets needed a bit of a polish. All of this was expected. That's it?
I'm just blown away by this guitar. I haven't even set it up or put a decent set of strings on it yet. I just took it out of the box, started playing and didn't really want to put it down.
I've owned in the region of 100 different guitars over the years including Fender and Gibson custom shop models, high end Ibanez, ESPs, a PRS and a bunch of Standard Gibson models. Focusing entirely on playability and tone, this honestly more than holds it's own with virtually any of them.
As a bit of a play test I got a nice clean tone with a little reverb and chorus (Boss CS-2, Boss CE-5, Walrus Audio Slo through the effects loop on an Orange Dark Terror) and decided to compare this playing the same piece against the three guitars that were closest to me at the time (Fender Custom Shop David Gilmour Stratocaster, Fender MIM Player Series Stratocaster, Gibson Les Paul Studio): The verdict was unanimous in support of the HB-35Plus.
Alright, I did go for a tone that *suits* the HB35 more than the others, but it still had no business being the clear winner in my view.
I can't vouch for the other variants, but this guitar is just ridiculously, mind-blowingly good. It's just insane to me that it's available at this price point.
I've got a set of Grover "tulip" tuners which I'll be putting on it. I've also get a new Tusq nut and full set of electrics which I'd planned to upgrade it with, but honestly? I'm not going to bother.
If you can overlook the finishing issues (which are only really visible if you've got it in your hands and are actively looking at them) and are willing to stick on a nice set of tuners, you'll have an absolutely insane guitar for virtually no money.
Don't think, just buy it.