Harley Benton ST-Modern HSS BK

I had the need for a little beater guitar to be able to do as many sounds/genres as possible - so, naturally, a HSS Strat!

Recently I've had so many problems with much more expensive guitars having really bad QC, so I wasn't sure what to expect from this, for so little money. But when this came and I opened the box, and I looked over every inch, I couldn't find a single thing wrong with it. It's baffling, how does Harley Benton do it? The one thing I didn't like was the look of the laurel fretboard at first, but that changed when I did a couple small mods:

1. The string trees aren't good, and they would catch the strings while tuning or using the trem, resulting in that annoying "clicking" noise!
I replaced them with GOTOH RG15/RG30 string trees for 5 Euro, and the issue was gone! HIGHLY suggested mod, just buy them with your guitar!
(Make sure to drill larger holes, 2mm seemed to be just right.)

2. I replaced the saddle screws because they were sticking out too long, digging into my flesh when palm muting - this is also very cheap to do!

3. Not really a mod but I applied lemon oil to the fretboard before putting fresh strings on, and that transformed it. It wasn't ugly - just DRY!

Highly recommended! I doubt there's a better beginner guitar (with a trem) on the market!

As the title implies, this is a great guitar no doubt, however as most people interested in buying a guitar at this price point will already presume, you will want to most likely do some minor tweaking and or upgrades in order to get the most out of it as the tuning stability is a little hit or miss at times, not bad, but not great. The coil splitting feature makes this guitar stupidly versatile, it looks great and its very comfortable to play, if i had to pay more at the time, i wouldn’t have complained, i’d say its perfect for both beginners and experienced players like myself on a budget wanting to just take the route of upgrading parts overtime.