Harley Benton ST-62 VW Vintage Series

OK, its Eu111 (£79) so its not going to be a Fender CS Strat but it IS surprisingly good for the money. Clearly styled around the early 60's Strats, its a good looking instrument. Straight out of the box it presented no cosmetic faults whatsoever. It comes with an 'accessory pack' of truss rod and bridge adusting allen keys, a "throwaway" short, cheap and nasty 1/4" mono jack lead, and the tremolo (vibrato) arm. This model is called "Vintage White" but is really light cream, just as Oly White might become after many years. Its a thick plastic paint coat which hopefully will wear well. So I expected quite a dull body tone acoustically but the Basswood body is quite reasonably resonant. It's fitted with branded Wilkinson 60's style single coil Alnico pickups, standard Strat controls and 5 way switch. Lifting the scratchplate reveals fairly cheap pots and blade switch (what do you expect for Eu111?) but for the moment everything works as it should with little "noise" - and I work right in front of the monitor. The bridge is a mock-60's no-name with pressed steel saddles. As supplied, its hard-tailed - flat to the body - but it's only a few minutes work to loosen the claw and bridge screws sufficiently to give a 2.5 to 3mm float. The 3 springs supplied do allow tuning to return to normal after use. Serious dive-bombing does knock the tuning out however. The worst thing about the bridge, and about the guitar in total is the positively awful zinc trem block. It's small and the internal screw thread for the arm is SO slack that it actually rattles unless it is wound in tight, which defeats the object. Whatever tolerance it has been tapped to is a very poor one. Time to get out the PTFE tape! The scratchplate is a 3 ply 11 screw mock-tortoiseshell one. 3 ply torty on a 62 Strat? Dont think so! The edge finish was very good and I thought it was very pretty. Neck pocket wasnt a 'precision fit' but wasn't at all bad and I've seen worse on 'real' Fenders.
The neck is 22 frets (excellent idea) Canadian Maple (that's Pine to you and me) with a rosewood topping and medium jumbo frets. No skunk stripe so the adjustable truss rod was inserted prior to being capped. Kluson type no name tuners keep tune reasonably well. Two string trees which I may experiment with the removal of to remove friction points. Fret dressing was good, no sharp edges or loose frets etc. The neck is a C profile and 13.75" radius fretboard so quite flat compared to some but very playable. Not hugely struck on the poly varnished neck (prefer satin myself) but it does not get sticky so its a personal thing.
Came with 9's D'Addario's which sounded OK but were like playing elastic so were replaced with Elixir 11's.
Sounds? For Eu111 ((£79) it gives a good account of itself IMO. (Tested through a Vox AC30 twin cab). ALL the pickups are a little 'brighter' than I expected, the Bridge having quite some 'bite' that I had to tone down with amp EQ. Neck pickup is nicely rounded but to my ears didn't quite have the depth on the top 3 strings. Roll off the tone, run a bit, or even a lot, of Overdrive and its an instant Blues guitar. Very impressive for a cheap Axe. Middle is a good general purpose pickup, quite warm and also good when driven into a compressor and OD pedal for some crunch. Bridge is wonderfully twangy at the bottom end but a bit brittle on the top two strings, especially if you're working above 12th fret. I'm sure I will find an amp setting that helps in this regard. Its great for RocknRoll. The in between 'quack' settings can give you Tele type tones or Mark Knopfler too.
Apart from the terrible zinc trem block in the obviously low spec bridge unit, the general and overall quality level, playability and the sounds you can get from this guitar exceeded my expectations. By a LOT!! How Thomann can do it for the money beats me!

After reading the numerous praises and positive reviews on this guitar - I must say I am quite disappointed with what I got.

First off, the guitar gets out of tune after just a few minutes of soloing in the upper positions. The tuners cannot be tightened with a screw or otherwise adjusted, so you"re left at the mercy of their cheapness - and they are just mercilessly lousy...

Second, even after 4th thorough octave - action adjustments of all strings, some frets around the octave simply won't get in tune. You'll get a quite substantially out-of-tune note every time you play them. Funny thing is, frets a few positions above - play well and are in tune whrn played. T.m. the problem is non-fixable on my side.

Third' the hiss going out of the singlecools when the strings are not played is much more intensive than with other strats. I also own a Fender strat USA, with standard (not noiseless) pickups, - and the noise is much, much less prevalent + it gets nearly noiseless in the combined positions , which for some reason does not work with this strat clone

And fourth, the trem bar is totally useless, Even a slightest move with the tremolo- and you can tune the guitar again.

I had to return this guitar. My prrvious Harley Benton from Thomann - a PRS copy - was a much, much better piece...

This only needed a small setup for my preferences, but it was already playable out of the box. I had very low expectations for this guitar and wanted to buy it to see if I would like a strat type guitar as I only had Gibson and Epiphone LPs as electrics. Thought I would either modify or sell it if I don't like it.
I immediately fell in love with this guitar after playing it. Much better than some of the lower end Fenders that I played, but this is just my opinion.

Sound wise it's okay, I guess it could be much better with pickup updates (I am considering replacing the pickguard to have a single humbucker maybe).
The bridge pickup has much higher output than the others but the internet says this is by design. I mainly play either bridge or the neck with mid to high gain, and it works well for me.
What amazes me the most is the playability. The fretwork and all the hardware is in very good condition. I play 09s tuned to Eb on this one with 2 springs on the tremolo it works well (works amazing with vintage VH style of playing). The trem has no tuning issues if you set it up correctly. If I really abuse it I just retune it between songs.
In two weeks I'm going to take this to its first gig, let's see how it goes.
Definitely worth the money.

Note1: One thing I forgot to mention is that the laurel keyboard on mine looks much darker than it does in the stock picks, which I really enjoy, also the finish looks more off-white tan yellow, but this depends on the lighting ofc.

Note2: Not about this product but a friend of mine got the more expensive fusion model with FR. I really didn't like that one half as much as I liked mine. Maybe the quality really deviates or maybe because they had to put more expensive hardware on that one they cut the costs from QC. The neck is like a baseball bat, and the fretwork is much worse than mine, cuts your fingers when doing slides.

I will continue giving shots to HB as I am more than pleased with mine, though.

PS. I did have terrible feedback/noise problems with this on stage, which wasn't the case in the rehearsals. I'll upgrade the pickups. Getting a guitar like this at this price point is still awesome, I'm keeping my 5 stars for total, but having spent more time with it I'm decreasing the sound rating from 4 to 3