Harley Benton HB-35Plus Gun Metal Blue

The Good - Finish of the paint and bodywork is great. Neck -good. Pickups sounds great as is, often need to replace pickups at this price-point but these are great. Plenty of tone options with push/pull coil split. Gold hardware and paint finish is great.

The Bad - Stock nut - terrible + cheap plastic, 1st/2nd fretted notes were very sharp. Cut terribly and strings did not seat properly. Upon removing and sanding bottom of nut, as it was cheap plastic, removed far too much after only a light sanding - resulting in sitar effect. Finding a replacement was tricky as this is a 43mm (42.95)
nut width, not like the wider epiphone nuts (43.90) . Replaced nut with a graptech tusq - PT-6643-00, actually intended for a PRS, but was a drop in replacement at perfect height. If using an "intended" style epiphone (335) nut, you'd need to sand the sides and bottom down.

Tuners - very spongy, tuning is not smooth, tends to "jump", tuning stability not great, nowhere near as good as a similarly priced Ibanez or others at this pricepoint. Will need replacement.

Fretwork - very rough and scratchy, needed a good polishing/filing on initial setup. Some high/lifted frets resulting in dead notes/ buzz needed reseating and leveling with a fret hammer. Will probably need gluing down permanently in the near future. Fretboard was bone dry out of the box but nothing some lemon oil wont fix.

Overall a great sounding guitar and good mod platform at this pricepoint, but be warned there will be teething issues. This guitar was apparently QC 'checked' but clearly not enough.