Harley Benton SC-1000 WH Progressive Line

It looks nice, but I'm going to have to spend a lot of time and some money to upgrade it to a decent guitar.
The volume pots are basically useless, i.e., they work essentially as a switch (I'm guessing they are the wrong value). Comes with cheap dime-sized pots, and the wiring is sloppy, e.g., wires twisted together with a piece of tape over it. Not really impressed with the tuners; they feel kind of sloppy so I will probably replace them. Knobs rub on the body of the guitar. The plate over the electronics on the back doesn't sit flush on the guitar. The action came set crazy high, so I had to adjust it way down and, of course, the pickups as well. Was not really happy that the adjusting screws on the bridge came tool damaged. Of course, the frets are going to need work, i.e. polishing and filing the ends. Necks a bit on the beefy side, kind of like the old Gibsons. Other than that, it sounds pretty good, but I'm already considering changing the pickups. I thought it would be nicer considering I have another HB guitar that I love.

The guitar appears to have been carved from a chunky piece of Mahogany, so the sustaaaaaaaaaaaiiinnnn goes on forever. My only gripes are with the neck which is rather fat, maybe too fat, for my liking and feeling r that reason doesn't lend itself well to high speed soloing in the high register. Add to that the majority of the frets that needed filing down before making the guitar playable, and it all contributed to my overall low rating. Having said that, the paint job is outstanding and on a par with guitars four or five times more expensive. The active pickups were not to my liking and so I replaced them with passive ones. One thing I wish to add is the usual high professionalism from the guys at Thomann. My guitar arrived with a big chip on its back, in my opinion caused by mishandling on the part of the courier. Anyway, on informing Thomann about my issue, after providing them with photographic evidence of the damage, they didn't hesitate to offer me a discount on the price. I can't say 'Fairer than that'.

This is the 2nd guitar I’ve gotten from Harley Benton. The first one was a Ex-73 explorer. That guitar plays great. This one came looking great. But once I plugged it in I noticed some electrical issues. The volume knobs didn’t work correctly. The neck pickup volume switch will turn on and off whether it’s fully down or fully up. It has to sit somewhere in the middle. The pickup selector is finicky that if you bump it along with messing with the volume knobs, the output drops and you sound like you have vintage pick ups with low output. Gotta get lucky messing with the selector and volume knobs to get full power back. Pickups also pick up a lot of outside noise. Along with some radio stations if you’re into that.