Harley Benton ST-20 BK Standard Series

This guitar is a very solid guitar for the money. The next and body are good and it is a really good platform to build a solid partscaster. Great value for money. Good entry level / beginner guitar if you are prepared to put some work in (intonation, action and fret ends) and upgrade into it (factor in an additional €40-65 for tuning machines and possibly an input jack, although it's still playable/ enjoyable without them). My ratings are taking the price into context.

Positives include:
- the neck and body is good and has a reassuring weight to them;
- the bridge / tremolo seems solid and stays in tune well once the tuners are changed;
- the pickup selector feels solid;
- the strings were much better than I expected but I still replaced mine to clean the fretboard;
- and the paint job was fine.

Negatives include:
- The tuners are really bad and keep slipping, with poor tuning stability (I replaced them straight away with the harley benton locking tuners, which are really good for the money);
- The input jack seems very weak and cuts in and out, so will need to be replaced. Short term solution was to unscrew the plate and bend it back into position but still not solid enough;
- Pick-ups are fine but a little thin sounding.
- Fret ends are a little sharp but easily fixed with a light sanding (first time I've done this and it went fine).

Update: I replaced the input jack with an Allparts gold one and that fixed the cutting out issue and somehow made the pick-ups sound much fuller and remove the thin sounding issue I mentioned above. I was thinking of changing the pick-ups later but I don't think I will bother now. Be careful changing the input jack though, as the new one was too big for the stock plate, so I replaced that with a Fender one (although a decent drill and bit would probably do the job on the stock plate). Guitar sounds good now.