ST-20MN CA Standard Series : Good guitar for a very low price!

What I love: the look of the maple neck. It's why I bought this specific version of this Harley Benton Strat. Very nice! Also, the price is obviously unbeatable. Great as a fun project to replace a part every now and then.

Overall, the build quality is unfortunately one of the worse aspects of the guitar. The frets are fine, even the default strings were totally okay, but what I find lacking is the whammy bar. In terms of functionality, I might as well leave it off (if it wasn't for the cool look ;-)), because the bridge creaks and groans every time I use the whammy.

Also, I recently found that the finish is chipped off in a place (luckily not where you'd really see it, so no big deal). I don't think it is something that I did myself, maybe it happened during shipping or before that, but there's no real way to know.

I had to majorly tweak the intonation and the action of some of the strings, but about half of them were already really well intimated. It's not something I'd obviously expect from an 80 euro guitar to have perfectly intonation fresh out of the factory, so no worries there; I spent about half an hour of fiddling with a screwdriver and it's much better now.

Other than that, the sound is pretty good for these stock pickups! Note that the wiring is classic Strat wiring, so keep in mind that the two tone pots control the neck and middle pickup, and the bridge pickup has no tone control.

Once I slap on some Elixir strings and polish the fretboard a bit (tip: buy lemon oil wipes), I think I'll be very happy with this steal of a guitar! Definitely recommended, aside from a few weak areas.