Harley Benton ST-Modern HH DS

I bought this because I want to try Jake E Lee tricks. I got it last week and I am really impressed. There are some of my observations:
Pros:
+ Good build quality for the price. Frets are decent. Screw holes are drilled very straight an clean. It seems that the production line uses CNC as much as possible.
+ I like the color.
+ The pickups are fine. In my signal chain the bridge pickup sounds more fuzzier than Seymour Duncan JB. If I tune the tone knob down to about 60%, I can get more solid bass. So the tone knob actually does a good job in this guitar.

neutral:
I setup this low E string to have 2mm clearance over the 12th fret, and high E string 1.7mm. I got no buzz up to 18th fret. I think the 20th fret on B and high E string is a little bit high. For the price I can not expect more.

This guitar comes with 0.10 gauge strings. But I like 0.09 string gauge more.

Cons:
- The height adjustment screws on the bridge are quite pointy. And the black paint fells easily. So I bought some 8mm M3 screws to replace them.
- Like the painted screws, the black paint on the frame of the bridge fells also quite easily.
- I think the string trees are too low for the high posts of the locking tuners.
- The neck is chunky. If you don't like thick guitar neck, this is not a good option. I think this is for saving the production time and costs. Thinner neck means more time for cutting, more requirement of wood quality, and more risk of unwanted deformation/break.

In summary, a good guitar for someone who has experience, patient and curiosity of hard tail bridge. If you can manage your expectation of this guitar, it give you infinite fun and possibilities without robbing your pocket.

Die Kombi aus 2 Humbuckern und dem Push/Pull Poti ist so genial! Es lassen sich viele mega Sounds machen. Ich brauche beides: Neck und Bridge-Stellung, und beide überzeugen restlos. Die Mechaniken halten die Stimmung, als ob davon ihr Leben abhängen würde: Auch bei nagelneuen Saiten! Ja, ich bin auch sprachlos. Das Griffbrett ist wie lt. Beschreibung sehr handlich. Dabei war auch ein Kabel. Kein teueres, aber ist nett gemeint :). Die Farbe ist wunderschön und die Verarbeitung ist makellos. Kaufempfehlung!

This is the perfect first guitar(it is my 11th, haha). This is how it should be done. Hardtail bridge, locking tuners, 2 splittable humbuckers, great neck, done.
If you are looking for your first guitar, nothing comes close at this price and much higher.
Comes with 10s which is too heavy for beginners in standard tuning.
Only thing that can be upgraded are the string trees, 3 bucks, and not even necessary.
Came playable out of the box, no setup needed.
Slightly disappointed because my ST Modern HSS came with a slightly flamy neck, very beautiful, this one is plain and the laurel fretboard on this looks lower quality than the one on the HSS, but it is still better than guitars costing twice as much.
Feel of the neck is great.
Pickups are surprisingly good and split sounds are very useful and 'stratty'.
Highly tecommend getting both this and the HSS. Amazing value guitars.

So I ordered this guitar as a platform for mods, and I couldn't have chosen a better guitar. Harley Benton puts the attention to detail where it counts.
1. The neck is a dream. The relief was spoton, fretwork was amazing, all the frets sit perfectly and every fret is also perfectly leveled. I only did some minor cleanup on the fret ends while doing an intensive polishing job.
2. The body is also flawless. The neck pocket is perfectly fit to the neck and all the routing is clean.
3. The hardware is all very acceptable as far as quality of materials and workmanship but here are where the mods start making sense. The tuners are surprisingly good for such budget tuners. The ratio allows for pretty accurate tuning and the fact that they are locking add to the tuning stability. Unfortunately the tuning pegs are made of plastic which makes everything in me say that these must be switched out for some Kluson Revolution Locking vintage tuners. They have the vintage look but also the 10mm posthole which is standard on this model. The string trees were switched immediately for some Graph Tech string trees, they may seem expensive but they are the best 15bucks you'll ever spend to get better tuning stability. The graphite nut was cut beautifully and strings don't snag or hang in the slots at all. The bridge is well built and the saddles are surprisingly well machined and smooth on the corners. This brings me to the only problem with this guitar, the grub screws for the saddle height adjustment are too long and once the action is setup these screws stick out almost 2mm out the top of the saddles. This is an easy fix with M3 #40 8mm grub screws. Unfortunately Thomann doesn't carry these so I had to order them on Amazon from MusicLily. (Hint hint Thomann!). I will eventually switch the saddles out for Graph Tech String saver classic saddles for the better tuning stability and less string breakage. The electronics obviously don't consist of high end boutique wiring, pots and pickups BUT, all the wiring is done well, all hardware is installed professionally and sits wonderfully. The pots are a little sensitive, there is a sudden drop in volume when the volume is turned down slightly, same with the tone control. This can also be smoothed out by a capacitor but that's not a necessity. Opinions on pickups are just that, opinions. With that said, I love the sound of these pickups, the humbucking mode is a little dark but that brightens up beautifully with a pull of the tone pot and an instant switch to single coil land. Honestly, 3 humbucking tones and 3 single coils tones all varying in brightness is much more than most people need. The pickups are also much hotter than most of the pickups on my other guitars so I lowered them particularly low because of volume but they still sound amazing.

When the guitar arrived it was not playable. The action was almost 4mm high, the intonation was not even setup at all, no string radius (all saddles flat) and the guitar was never even tuned, the d and g string were flopping in the wind. But now, after a good setup, rolling of the fretboard, new grub screws, a fret polishing and a heavy duty conditioning of the fretboard (one of the dryest I've ever seen), this is now my best playing guitar that absolutely is so much more than "worth the money".
I would suggest that if you have no experience setting up your own guitars, this is a great chance to learn how to do it. There are great tutorials online. But if you aren't interested in investing many hours of learning and just want a guitar that is immediately playable, you will have to get this professionally setup which will add on to the overall cost of this guitar, but even then, IT'S A STEAL OF A DEAL! I have invested 200euro all together and a few hours of my time and this baby plays like a 4000euro instrument.