HB-35 VB Vintage Series : Not great out of the box, but very nice with a little work

After ogling the HB-35's for a long time, I finally took a leap on the base model with a hard case. I was very impressed that it only took a week for it to arrive in the US.

Out of the box, I was underwhelmed. The guitar looked great. Only flaws were a sloppy bit of binding on the underside, and the fretboard has a few small indentations around the 2nd-3rd fret (these weren't visible until after I took the strings off to give the fretboard a Linseed Oil treatment). Neither are noticeable except on close inspection.

But it didn't play well. The factory strings were junk. Even after I replaced them with a good set, the action was stiff, and the stock pickups were tinny and harsh.

So, a bit of work: I installed a cheap set of Wilkinson ceramic PAFs and brought the action down with a truss rod tighten, and now this is a much better guitar. These pickups are really too hot for the body style, so I will be replacing them again, but fixing the action made it much, much more enjoyable to play. As they say, "For the money..." it's a good bet.