Harley Benton ST-20 CA Standard Series

Been lucky to play original USA Fender Strat, several Gibson SG, and numerous Epiphones before this guitar. So will try to describe my perception of new to me brand name on example of this guitar.
Pluses of this Harley Benton ST-20 CA Standard Series guitar:
- it looks very bright and beautiful - much more attractive to my taste, than most of begginers level guitars by other manufacturers.
- head, neck, fretboard, deck - are good.

Minuses I've found:
- out of the box completely untuned and no chance any single of 6 strings will give you an octave at 12 fret;
- electronics with tone pot at maximum working like radio receiver - you can hear local radiostation weather report trough your guitar cabinet (funny fact - Harley Benton SC-450 P90 GT Classic Series tuned at the same station. So may be it's just patented, but undocumented, feature from manufacturer?).
- frets ends will bite your hand serious after few minutes of playing. Needed to be shortened for about 1-1,5 mm from both sides of the fretboard and polished after that.

Sound is good.

So my sincere recomendations to manufacturer - keep your instruments looking that good, but improove electronics and finishing of your products a bit. If you'll made this, I'll change rating to 5 stars for sure.

I purchased this guitar as an add-on to another more expensive guitar purchase. Adding this <$80 guitar only bumped my shipping up about $10. IMO this guitar is an outstanding instrument in the making. Its fundamental build quality (is everything you woould expect from a CNC built item.

The neck is straight with no high frets. It looks beautiful. It just needs a home set-up and the frets polished (see Youtube). Add some after-market locking tuners for <$30 and it becomes a gem. And I could not have asked for better customer service from Thomann. I don't need any more guitars, but I wouldn't be surprised if I ordered one for eh high-end Harley Benton's down the road. Well done Thohman.

I'm not much of a guitar player and I've never owned an expensive guitar. I needed an inexpensive one for some projects and this did the job perfectly well. The strings that came with it aren't very good though, so I recommend upgrading those immediately. But everything seems to work as it should. Seems to stay in tune pretty well (again, I don't have any comparison to more pricey guitars). I did adjust the intonation as it seemed slightly off. And the frets need polishing, they sound a bit scrapey. In short: excellent value for money. If you need a really inexpensive Strat-style guitar that just works, this should do fine.