ST-25TH Firemist : A 5-star strat

Having an actual Fender strat I don't even know why I bought this guitar - I guess to add one more to my collection of several Harley Bentons. And I'm not going to say the usual "at this price this guitar is ..." blah blah. It's a great strat no matter the price. Of course the cheap price means not so strict quality control - the guitar I received had sharp fret edges - not just on a couple but on all the frets (could be due to wood shrinking caused by climate conditions). Not difficult to fix, you just need a small file and a lot of patience, so I'm not going to give lower rating because of this. The color is not really gold but rather copper - not my favourite color but the body finish feels really nice to the touch, not glossy but more matte. The roasted neck is excellent, make sure you lube the fretboard with your favourite lubricant. The single coil pickups sound good to me - on my Fender strat I have Seymour Duncans so I will not compare them 1:1 but with tweaking the EQ on your amp/sim/DAW I think you can get pretty much any strat tone that you need. They are about as noisy as any single coils so no surprise there. The bridge pickup is a rails humbucker which is not bad either, makes the guitar more versatile if you need to take only one guitar to a gig (unless you're a heavy metal guy but then I guess you won't be looking at a strat). The gig bag is also nicer than other cheap gig bags, has a neck pad/strap.