Hi!
I ordered this Harley Benton guitar about 2 weeks ago as a small birthday gift for myself and also to replace my aging Squier Affinity strat. I'm rather poor and low-end guitars are all I've ever been able to afford, so trust me when I tell you that I researched the *hell* out of that guitar before making a purchase.
And what can I say about this beauty?
It's... it's so refreshing to have such mind-blowing quality on a 116¤ instrument. When it arrived, the guitar barely had to be set up: the action was and is still perfect after 2-3 weeks of daily playing. The frets do not buzz in the least and the truss rod didn't need any adjustments. The intonation is perfect, the length of the strings is screwed in perfectly and the Roswell pickups are set at a great height for instant, out-of-the-box playability.
I don't know if I lucked out and got an especially well arranged guitar or if I should thank the lovely people at Thomann for setting it up before shipping.
Sound-wise, it's very, VERY satisfying. Great mids, decent treble and the bass will largely depend on the gauge of your strings but I am very impressed with the coherence of the sound on this instrument.
Then again, I'm still a beginner (intermediate-ish~, playing for 5 years on and off), so this is mostly for bedroom playing and jam sessions with friends. However, I can definitely see this guitar being used on a stage if you're starting your performing career.
Feel-wise/feature wise, I took off one small star (would be a half if I could) due to the volume knob having a sizeable gap between the knob and the pickguard, and also, the tremolo needs a bit of a rough touch to be used.
Compared to my old Squier however... My goodness. I will never, ever buy a squier again if I can find a Harley Benton equivalent. The sound is better on HB thanks to the roswell pickups (as opposed to the in-house ones that come on Squiers, where the quality varies a lot more depending on yearly batches); the instrument feels extremely solid and vibrates ever so slightly in your arms when you play it (it's a good feeling, trust me); and all of that for a lesser price than Squier since you're not really paying for the brand name there. In fact, the instrument itself feels a lot more like my friend's 400~ish¤ Jaguar Squier than it feels like regular Affinity/Bullet Squier Strats.
Overall, I'm thoroughly impressed and happy with my purchase. If you're on the fence and have watched countless YT videos about this guitar like I have, trust me, the favorable opinions are genuine.
And then additionally, I would like to thank the people at Thomann who took care of my order. I'm used to ordering off of MusicStore and the speed at which my order was processed and sent, along with the overall transparency and feel of openness I got from the multiple emails Thomann sent me, all have made sure that I'll be ordering on Thomann again.