Harley Benton ST-25TH Firemist

First, the good: The neck is beautiful and fits snug in the hand. Very comfortable to hold and it appears as though there has been some minor fretboard edge-rolling. The locking tuners look high-quality and the stainless steel frets are a great appointment (had I not encountered what will be discussed soon). The pickups sound fine. The finish is quite nice too. Excellent price. You won't find another guitar like this for what is being asked for.

Now, the bad: The strings above the 10th fret buzz (and a couple below) rattle like crazy. I counted up to 14 high frets when tested with my fret rocker, which explains why the amount of fret buzz and choking that this guitar gets is unbelievable. I have never experienced such negligence from Harley Benton before and am stunned how this could have ever passed quality control. I looked to see if the frets were possibly popping out of their cavity and they are all seated properly. In addition, the action is not low and the truss rod is properly tuned. The issue is clearly with the leveling of the frets, which makes it practically unplayable. I tried raising the action, but in order to adjust it to the point in which the buzz sufficiently disappears the strings are so high off the body that the instrument cannot be played in a way comfortable to the fingers. I am very disappointed with the state that this instrument arrived in. I want to love it, as I do my other Harley Benton guitars, but in it's current state and for the current price I cannot come to bring myself to give it more than 2 stars.

I ordered the TE version in the same order and have encountered no such problem with that model, so I suspect I got unlucky with the ST.

I've been playing this guitar for a little over a month now and I have to say for the money I've spent on the guitar it plays and sounds unbelievably good. After a little bit of waiting for the guitar to arrive (month and a half) my first impressions were excellent, the setup was fine, the guitar was very comfortable, the neck and finish were beautifully done (roasted maple neck and the awesome firemist finish which definitely looks better in person). I had two minor problems at the start, the first one being the tremolo bar which was pretty hard to pop into the bridge hole (a fair amount of force was needed, despite me being scared of breaking it I managed to do it). The second problem/annoyance was the plastic protective foil (for some reason a double foil was applied), which was pretty hard to remove from the guitar, as is the case with many strat-style guitars (you need to remove the knobs).
As for the sound, I am REALLY impressed with the pickups, the neck and middle singlecoils sound very nice, but I am most impressed with the hot rail style humbucker in the bridge position, it kicks really hard (and also has a coil split mode).
Everything mentioned so far indicates that this guitar is definitely a steal for the price (oh and yeah, did I mention it has locking tuners?), which I certainly have to confirm, but I am sorry to say I had one major problem with the guitar - its tremolo system has very bad tuning stability (regardless of no usage of the tremolo bar). I've spent an additional 50 euro for a professional luthier to fix it, which he managed to do partially, but still, now in rehearsals I don't have to tune between each song, but between every two songs. It seems like eventually the only solution is to block off the bridge to turn it into a hardtail. Don't know if this is a problem with that bridge in general or if it's a QC issue, but yeah...
To conclude, if it wasn't for the problematic bridge, I would certainly say that this has to be the perfect guitar to get. If you're on the verge of buying this guitar, definitely go for it (while you still can, as it is limited edition, until the end of the year I believe).

Pros:
- nice "exotic" firemist finish
- very comfortable to play and beautiful roasted maple neck
- very solid sound, awesome hot rail humbucker
- locking tuners
- very good price point (Harley Bentons are known for it, but this is outrageously good)

Cons:
- bad tuning stability - garbage tremolo system
- annoying (double) protective foil
- waiting times for the 25th anniversary models

I have bought many Harley Bentons, some being pretty good, but this is by far the best one I have ever owned, and the first that's compelled me to write a review. Some things to know: the color is almost like a copper more than a gold, but I also find it really unique being that color. The pickups are pretty decent, but if you are picky about pickups, you may want to change them (I almost always do). Also, I am not sure if they are all going to be this way, but the flamed maple neck on mine was ultra flamed, more flamed than I've seen on any other guitar in person before, but I probably got somewhat lucky getting one with such stellar flamed maple. The stainless steel frets are crazy smooth and shiny. I've gotten stainless steel frets before that were still scratchy, but these are not like this, Harley Benton seems to save their best materials for these.