TE-20 SB Standard Series : Incredible budget Telecaster

About a month and a half ago I bought this instrument, and I love it to bits. It sounds terrific, plays like butter (although it did require a thorough setup) and looks stunning. There is however one issue in particular that sticks out like a sore thumb to me and is the only reason it loses not one, but two stars, and that is the tuners. I passionately dislike them. They manage to feel sticky and too loose at the same time, and cost me way longer than reasonable to get my guitar in tune, by giving a lot of gnarly resistance and being too loose a fit between cogs at the same time. I plan to upgrade to better tuners ASAP myself.

Other than this issue, it is an absolute dream for the price. Everything just works, I have a real hard time telling it apart (soundwise) from more expensive Teles (a good thing) and I hope it will stay this way for many more months or even years to come.

TLDR: For the price, I doubt there is anything better you can get. I cannot recommend it more, but you will have to deal with annoying tuners.

So now that I have upgraded to better tuners and played it for a couple months more, I can say that this review still stands. I've even done some work under the pickup cover and to the frets and found a pleasant surprise: The neck pickup cavity is routed to fit a humbucker, if that's something you're into. The bridge cavity, however, is not. Also I've found that there isn't a whole lot of room underneath the potentiometers in case you would like to add push/pull functionality, the parts I installed just barely fit. Really that's all, it still is a good budget instrument, though quite heavy, and I don't regret buying it.