Harley Benton CST-24T Ocean Flame

The Good: Received them 5 days after ordering in good shape. Beautiful top and neck. The intonation was almost spot on. The Bad: The nut was cut way too high.. Had to take it to my luthier and he fixed that, adjusted the saddles, and slightly re-intonate ($60). I conditioned the fretboard (which does have some scrape marks on it, but is level) It now plays like a $1K guitar, w/ amazing action and feeling.. The pickups lack detail and low end. Replaced the selector switch (the stock one was flimsy/noisy) with a Switchcraft and put in a set of Tonerider Classic Alnico II Classic pickups and it ROCKS! So the 'mods/fixes' cost $175 making it a less than $500 guitar. It now sounds like a $2000+ guitar and plays so nice. It's crazy for the price. It rivals my PRS Santana III, but with a faster and thinner neck.

So I have owned this guitar to a number of months now and here is my summary.

I love it! It plays wonderfully!
The fretboard feels good.
The neck has kept its shape.
It stays in tune.
Here is what makes it NOT 5 stars: It is too heavy, not so bad you cant play it but its got weight. I don't love that the white binding turned more cream but its completely fine. The fret ends are clean but not perfect. All and all the best thing in my opinion is that this guitar is amazing!

It is not perfect. It shouldn't be expected to be perfect. But its very, VERY, close!

Was really excited buying this guitar basically off the back of YouTube reviews. The colour of the guitar I absolutely love and it feels like a quality instrument. Issues I had were the grub screw that hold the trem bar in was broken and the knob end from the trem bar was missing (as per photos on website. The guitar arrived in perfect order luckily although I was very worried as when the box arrived it was considerably bashed about with a large hole in one side. I informed Thomman of these issues and sent them several photographs of box to perhaps help someone else not get a damaged guitar. They also sent me a new grub screw. Just a small note but this was entirely my fault after doing my own set up I inadvertently overtightened the bridge screws and it took me ages to work out why my guitar tuner said the guitar was in tune but it sounded awfully out of tune. When I eventually rectified my mistake all was good again. Roswell pickups were also a pleasant surprise. In hindsight I would have bought same guitar with hard tail. But this is still my go to guitar most days. Keep up the good work Thomman these guitars are great value and decent quality, I'm retired and can't justify spending thousands of ££££ on guitars and quite frankly I wouldn't anyway now as affordable guitars like these are so good. Iron out the minor QC problems and you are world beaters!! Delivery from Germany to UK is spot on often quicker than UK to UK stuff. When looking to buy stuff now I always check Thomman website first free delivery on orders over £100 is also a big incentive to buy.