SC-450Plus VB Vintage Series : Absolutely worth the money

First of all, the reference pictures don't show how beautiful this guitar looks like in real life. Worth the money just for the looks already.

Pretty much arrived "ready to play" out of the box. Just tune up, plug it in and you will have a really nice piece to start with.

A few notes and thoughts:

Overall construction: A bit on the heavier side, but nothing too much. Everything is put together well and no obvious flaws on the paintjob or binding. The pickguard was a bit loose, but that's fixed simply by tightening the screw.

Pickups and the sound: Rosewell Alnico 5's sound great. Nothing bad about them to be honest (might replace them later on but that's a personal preference pretty much). All I had to do was adjust the pickup heights to my liking. Coil tap is a nice feature.

The neck: This is why I'm rating it only for 3* for quality. Don't get me wrong, for the money you get an absolute unit but just to be brutally honest, there are some minor issues that can be taken care of from the QC department. First of all, the frets were not polished at all - very grindy when bending the strings. This I fixed with some 0000 steel wool and general polishing. Secondly the fret ends around the 15th fret and upwards were quite sharp. Fixed by filing and sanding. It seemed like someone had already tried to file the frets around that area, as the binding on the fingerboard is a little bit damaged. Fortunately it's on the bottom side, so it doesn't bother me.

HB SC-Custom I bought a year ago had perfect frets for example. Might just have been the case of QC rushing with the guitars during the holiday season..

Tuners and tuning in general: The guitar seems to hold it's tuning quite well, tuners are tight and not slipping in any way.

Overall it's a amazingly great instrument for the price. After polishing the frets, dealing with with the sharp ends around 15'th fret and changing the strings (obvious first job for any guitar) it's something that well deserves a place in my collection. That's actually already 3'rd Harley Benton guitar for me and definitely not the last one.