CST-24T Black Flame : Superb instrument

Firstly let me start by saying that I've had both good and bad experiences with Harley Benton. On the one hand I have a 00 acoustic and I love it. On the other I briefly had a vintage style st copy and I didn't get on with that at all. It had some faulty wiring and hardware.

This instrument is flawless. On unboxing and visual inspection the instrument is beautiful, and everything is immaculate. The finish of the bindings and veneers are perfect. Frets are smooth and even. Everything is perfect.

In the hand, the guitar feels light and comfortable, the neck is not super thin, but not fat either. About the same as my Epiphone Les Paul std.

The hardware is all solid. Nice accurate tuners. Solid wilkinson bridge which is easy to adjust the action with, and it goes pretty low without any fret buzz. I don't use a tremolo, so I won't judge that.

In playability, again I'm nicely impressed. I usually use 9 gauge strings, and this came with 10 gauge and I left them on, because it' so nice to play already. I've never done this with a new guitar.

The sounds is really nice. The roswell pickups are pretty quiet and responsive. think and present in normal mode and satisfying clucky and sparkly with the coil split.

OK I'm astounded. This is better than all my other guitars that cost at least twice as much. I was dithering between this guitar and a higher end PRS SE for about 900 euros. I went for this thinking that I could always send it back and then go for the PRS SE if I wasn't happy. Well I can tell you I would still have been happy had I payed 900 for this one! I'm ecstatic that I only paid 220!

I'm now trying to think of a bad point for this guitar, and I genuinely cant. This is truly exceptional Harley Benton! Thank you.