Harley Benton JA-60 OW

I bought this JM because I wanted an inexpensive guitar which I wouldn't have to handle with care, one that could get some dings and beatings without me caring, but this guitar is great. I filed down the nut a little bit to make open chords sound better and adjusted the string height a bit, and I really do have fun playing on this even though I have 2 guitars at 10x the price.
From factory the head had a few marks, but that was the point of this guitar anyways, other than that it looks terrific. The finish is gorgeous and the back of the neck is actually quite stunning, I was in complete awe when I saw it.

I read a lot of reviews, and watched several videos, on this guitar before I took the gamble. I was not remotely disappointed.

Context: I've been playing guitar for about 20 years, and have owned and played a pretty good range of mid-high end guitars. One thing I've noticed in the last 5 or so years is the steady increase in quality of the cheap guitars, such as Squire, Laguna, and of course, Harley Benton. That said, this thing rises above even the best of the cheap "great" guitars

What I got was a guitar that was still 90% still in tune despite a trip across the ocean to the US and through a series of package processing facilities. It needed very little setup (could be none at all for some people), except for a small change of the action, and felt phenomenal.

The sound that came from my speakers after plugging it in and playing it for the first time was far beyond what I ever would have expected from a guitar at this price point. The overall sound maintained an excellent bottom-end without becoming muddy, while the high-end sounds (notes and natural sound of the strings) were bright without becoming shrill. I can honestly say I probably will not replace the pickups, which is first for me as far as factory pickups go.

The electronics are solid - no noise when turning knobs or flipping the pickup selector, and the jack stays pretty solid.

I have now gigged with this guitar several times over and found the tuning to be extremely stable, even in extreme temperature changes. My favorite example is when I took it out of my air conditioned car onto an outdoor stage when the temperature was 95F degrees and the humidity was about 80%. My ESP LTD EC-1000 Deluxe slipped out of tune a couple times in that show, but the Harley Benton did not - it held its tuning throughout the entire performance, was still in tune the next day.

Overall, the only thing I would change is the tuners, which are split-shaft for string-locking. They definitely work well, but they are a pain to work with when re-stringing. I will likely end up switching to proper locking tuners in the near future.