Harley Benton ST-62DLX OW Vintage Series

Neck on the "Deluxe" model had some nasty spikey fret ends on delivery. Some of the screw holes for attachment of the scratchplate (pickguard) have not been lined up perfectly thus there are screws which sit proud at untidy angles which looks to have been caused by being drilled before fitting the neck as the scratchplate is very tight to the neck pushing it out of alignment with the holes. The pickup selector would not select bridge pickup (either alone or with middle) until I fixed it (had this been tested it would have failed). Needed a significant setup including filing nut slots, neck shim and fret levelling.
Well that's the negative out of the way, now the positive. Following setup plays and feels good, tuners are good quality and hold tune, vibrato bridge is fine and works well. It sounds great, like a real ST which is certainly not a given even with more expensive ST types. Pickups are very good, no need to change (take note I changed the pickups on my other three Harley Benton electrics). Other than what I have already pointed out the finish is good, Olympic White being a slightly yellow white somewhere between White and Vintage White though all the gold plate and anodising may not be to everyone's taste; bear in mind the aluminium scratchplate provides decent hum shielding.
I've had the scratchplate off to inspect the electronics. Predicatably there is a PCB type selector rather than a blade type which is fine with me. Very pleasantly surprisingly, the pots are full size (!) and there are two (green) tone capacitors, one for each tone pot both unusual for budget guitars. Perhaps there is more than meets the eye to the "Deluxe" tag.
Summarising: as stated above, not quite all it should be out of the box but with a significant setup is now a jolly good instrument at a great price though less so if, unlike me, you need to pay for someone else to do the setup.

Bought this with a project in mind but was surprised on the initial quality for the price point. The general build quality is commendable and the finish and frets are acceptable. Yes, the frets could do with a quick dress just to take the roughness off but plenty of string bending gets the job done eventually. The pickups, to my ears, sound good out the box but I've already changed the bridge to a SD Hot Rails, which is what I always intended to do anyway. I've also swapped the gold pickguard to a Harley Benton tortoise shell one so I'm more than happy with what I've got. The only thing I'd say that lets it down are the tuners, 1 or 2 pegs struggle to hold tune but they seem to be getting better with more use.
With less than £100 of upgrades, the guitar has gone from a good, useable entry level guitar to a high end mid range beast so overall, well worth the money!