I have 3 Gibson/Epiphone Guitars to compare:
1. A Epiphone LP from 1998
2. A Gibson LP standard from 2007 or 2008 I'd say.
3. A Gibson SG-Special from 2014 (120Y Gibson anversary Edition)
With these as a reference I'm pleased with the HB. First the Stuff I like.
+ It looks nice. It's not a piece of art, but for the price, the Finish and Bindings and all this is fairly good.
+ It plays well. The neck is rather chunky. I bought my SG because it was the one (of 4) with the thinnest neck. The one on the HB is similar. SGs may have even thicker ones but it is more chunky than on my LPs. I like it.
+ The PickUps can both be coil split. which is nice. Also The Single-Coil sound of both is not to bad. I liked the split sound of the neck PU even more than the humbucker sound.
+ The Bridge PU's sound is ok. It almost has an soft out-of-phase like sound in lack of better description. It's labeled treble and that what it is.
- I didn't like the Neck PU. To dull, wooly and not really well defined. Like the tone pot was always full off (It's not broken, it get's even more "Jazz" if I turn it down). Also with distortion it tents to roar (in a bad way). This may be taste but I tried to fix this by screwing around with the screws. First I lowered the whole PU (And than also the Bridge-PU to match Volume again). Than I hoped to give it some clearance by messing around with the pole pieces. Ha! Two of them just slipped through the PU. They where just glued into the hole by the potting wax! Some minus on the quality rating here.Just don't do this. If you don't like the sound, expect to change the PU completely, before trying to adjust. Or expect to wait for replacement, with a broken guitar, like I do now.
- The strap pins are rather thick, on the part where the strap is gonna sit in the end. I swapped them out with some Fender ones, I had laying around. No big deal, but they may wear out the strap and help it slipping of the pin.
- I expect to change the tuners in the near future. But I'm not totally convinced. The may be good enough.
= If you find one which feels good to you and has nice wood and craftsmanship you can absolutely buy one of these. I'd plan some extra 100€-300€ for replacement parts. Then you got a nice guitar for the same money as you get it from e.g. Epiphone. And all the stuff you (maybe) need to change there too is already payed. A good bang for the buck.
