HB-35Plus Cherry : Shockingly better than I expected

I have been playing guitar for over 40 years, I have owned the expensive Fenders and Gibsons, the cheaper Mexican made Fenders and Chinese made Epiphones and other guitars. That being said, I decided to go back to University and finish my degree, so I am on a budget and have been looking for a reliable, inexpensive guitar. I ran across Harley Benton by chance when I was looking for semi-hollow ES-335 type guitars. Watched all the reviews and demos on YouTube, and was still skeptical due to the extremely low price, but saw that there was a money-back guarantee and a 3-year warranty, so I decided to take a gamble. I live in South Texas so the package took exactly 10 days to get here from Germany, which I thought was pretty quick.

Cons

When I received it and unboxed it, the only thing I saw wrong with the body was the pickguard, which seemed hastily cut by hand, which doesn't bother me, I always remove the pickguards from ES models. There were a couple of tiny blemishes on the body, but that's just cosmetics. If I wanted a perfect body, I'd save for a 4000.00 Gibson.

Pros:

I have read that other people had complaints about it not staying in tune very well, so I was prepared to get Grover tuners for it. However, after playing it ferociously for a few days, I have only had to tune it once, so the stock tuners stay. When I first plugged it in and played it clean, that was my WOW moment. It had a really warm tone, almost as good as the Gibson ES-339 I had. It sounded just as good dirty, and when I switched to single-coil, it had that cool "quack" that I hear with single-coil Strats. The neck was straight and the action was awesome right out of the box, but I did adjust it to my liking.

My experience after 3 days:

I have to say this is the first guitar I have ever had at this low price that I pick up and play and cannot put it down for hours. No, it is not a Gibson ES 339 that costs thousands, but I think this is much much better in playability and sound than many 500.00 US Epiphone ES-339 and 335 guitars I have owned. I highly recommend this guitar if you are on a budget and you need a great work-horse to gig with or just record or simply play and practice. This would make a great starter guitar for anyone learning how to play. I was planning to keep this until I graduated from University next year and able to afford a Gibson again, but I think I will keep this as part of my arsenal. Very fun to play!

I have already recorded tracks with this guitar, and it sounds awesome! It is a keeper!