With the ST-59HM, you get a quality instrument at a great price! It plays and sounds great. Expected some minor, inconsequential flaws at that price and was pleasantly surprised when I found none! I use it for playing at home with headphones, as well as amps. With the great prices, it is good way to acquire a number of guitar types for variety and not break the bank. I am extremely pleased with this purchase.
Everything works as expected. The gold tuners work well and look terrific. The nut is much better than some of the other Harley Bentons I own, with no sharp edges. The frets are smooth in all aspects and didn't need to have them worn in when bending strings at any of the frets. I like the pickups. They sound good enough and give you the basic tone one would expect with this style guitar. It's fun to play and I pick it up to play all the time. All the knobs and switches are good and work as expected.
pros - I literally loved every aspect of the guitar. Looks great, comfortable to play with nice sound. A shout out to their customer service too. I changed my orders a number of times for various reasons and they handled every change I wanted perfectly. I really appreciated their flexibility. If you are in the US it will take a day or so for them to get back to you these days.
cons - None really. Only concern is that if you are having it shipped to the US during the pandemic, it is going to take a while, figure 2-3 weeks. This falls on the shipping companies, not Thomann. From tracking it, it sits at the airport for a week or two
and then when it gets to the US, it gets shipped to Chicago more often than not in my case, and the USPS has taken as long as 2 weeks to get to NY. The one order that got sent to NY (by luck), 25 minutes from my house, sat there for days and ended up taking a week once it got moving. All of this is expected in these times, but it is frustrating to not see it making any progress, staying in the same place so long. I've had an order prior to the pandemic and it was a little more than a week, basically what they promised. Other shipping concerns are the outside box can take a beating. When it arrives, panic might start to set in, but the packaging inside is great with no concerns. Even when the outside box look damaged, rest easy, the inside boxes that actually hold the guitar are impeccable and strong.