Victory Active SBK : Good starting platform

I have not experienced the grounding issue that has been discussed on this guitar.

The body and finish is without issues. Tuners are so-so.. Usable, but with very bad feel, gear ratio is not 18:1 like fancy groves, but more like 10:1.

Guitar needed set up, few twists for truss rod, and strings were high.

Biggest issue is fretwork. Fret ends are fine, but whole fretboard needs a lot of polishing of frets, as there is lots of oxidation. Stock strings are trash, and were corroded, but this is to be expected. However, this is all manageable and part of basic setup.

Nonetheless, there is fret buzz on few frets (with normal string height of 1.5mm for high e, and 2mm for low e string measured from 12th fret to the bottom of a string, so nothing crazy low) - with this setup, high strings are choking during bends on few of the higher frets - this means that guitar needs fret leveling badly. If you gonna do it yourself, consider half of the guitar price for basic tools.

Pickups are OK, but I did not find big difference between bridge and neck in terms of sound - I prefer more rounded and thicker sound for the neck pickup. But works for metal I guess.

However you would not find flying v guitar in this price, and I have experienced much much worse for a five times more money.