Harley Benton SC-550 Black Cherry Flame

I decided to spend a few days with my newly acquired SC-550 as my prime practicing instrument so that I can give it as fair assessments as possible for people who are confused by those hundreds of videos where some rate it better than many times more expensive guitars while others claim that it's a cheap crap made to look good to fool you into buying it...

TL;DR: A beautiful, very playable guitar with sub-par pickups and some QC issues, mostly in the visual department. Is it better than the 'authentic' brand? Not even close. Can it be compared to more expensive guitars? In some aspects, yes. Is it worth its price? I'd say definitely yes.

I'm reviewing it before I do any modifications (apart from changing the strings to brand new NYXLs), which I plan to do in the near future (especially the pickups and the tuners) so this is basically out-of-the-box experience. With no further ado—

The good

The bone nut is very well cut and fitted, in fact I'd say that the nut is better than on my Epiphone LP Standard Plus Pro which is almost double in price, and on par with some of my 1k guitars.
The fretwork is excellent, I've seen worse fretwork jobs on guitars many times more expensive. Yes, you can see some tool marks and the edges are not filed evenly but they won't grab onto or scratch your fingers. There is a dead-fret (16th fret on 5th and 6th strings) but that can be easily filed down and it's not too much of an issue to begin with (just slight buzz).
The setup is really good—the intonation is almost perfect (very slightly off on the 2nd string), the action is excellent, there's no need for truss rod adjustment—I suspect that the setup was done recently at Thomann's HQ which are not that far away from me so no seasonal changes that would affect it, or I just might be lucky :)
Despite the body being made from two pieces of wood and having a scarf neck, it resonates really well and gives a ton of sustain (which the Rosewell pickups are not doing justice).
While I'll probably end up replacing the tuners at one point (I'm spoiled by locking tuners plus I don't like the look of the stock ones) they are very decent and usable—something I didn't expect on a guitar of this price.
The flaming top veneer is stunning, on par with my most expensive guitar (sure, it has a full flamed top and not just a veneer like Harley Benton but visually they are very similar).
The color is considerably different than what can be assumed from the pictures—and for the better! The red color is actually much more cherry than red as it is on the pictures and the freboard is completely different without even a hint of orange. I'd say that the fretboard color is very dark brown, something between rosewood and ebony, which makes it look much nicer in person than on the picture.


The weird

The neck is weird in lack of better terms—it's not a '60s neck for sure, it's considerably thinner but it's not as thin as what you'd expect from a shredding machine either. The shape is also confusing, something between C and D. It throws off my thumb placement so much that it will take some getting used to.
I've heard people complaining on the weight, I didn't weigh mine but I certainly have heavier guitars. There is no mention of weight reduction in the specs but if you knock around the guitar you'll definitely notice that some areas are more resonating than others so I'm not sure... Either way, as I mentioned before, it still has a ton of sustain.


The bad

Despite what you might expect by watching the reviews, the pickups are leaving a lot to be desired. I did not expect a Seymour Duncan set at this price point but I did expect something more vibrant and balanced. They might sound better when you put them through some 3k+ amps but I couldn't get them to sound satisfactory on a Boss Katana-100 for the life of me (I'd argue that the humbuckers on my super-strat RG550 produce more LP-ey tone than the Roswell pickups on the SC-550). Replacing the pickups with anything passable will easily cost half of the guitar's price which throws the value proposition of the SC-550 out of whack.
The 'perloid' inlays are not the best fit (they are not sticking out but the fretboard cutouts are too tolerant) and the largest one has a very visible crack across it.
There are various paint blemishes everywhere most in the form of small droplets and a some thin scratches, both which are not all that visible unless you're looking really close (to admire the gorgeous flamed top veneer for example) so nothing major, just annoying.
There is a deep paint crack around the 3rd tuner (I suspect it was due to over-tightening it to the headstock)
There is a visible chip of the 'gold' finish on one of the stopbar screws and a noticeable scratch on the stopbar itself.
The tone knobs are badly set in (almost placed at random turns)—given that they are numbered I would expect that they would correctly and consistently point their values. It's an easy 'fix' if it weren't for another problem—one of the knobs looks hastily forced in which caused it to crack a bit (the knobs are translucent so it's easily noticeable) and I'm afraid it could break if I pull it out for repositioning. These are 2.5€ a pop on the website so I'll just add a set to my next order and replace them with new ones which I'll carefully place in.
The truss rod cover screw is not screwed in straight but at an angle which is surprisingly quite noticeable (probably due to the gold color on black surroundings).


Conclusion

I don't have any other guitar in the sub-300€ range (in fact, my cheapest guitar is the aforementioned Epiphone) so I can only compare the value from what I would expect of a product at that price point (269€ at the time of writing). In that sense, I think it's quite a bang for the buck—the guitar is instantly playable, it looks gorgeous, there are no big tuning stability issues (for a single-cut of this style, that is)... basically, there are no glaring issues that will frustrate you to no end. The biggest beef I have with it are its pickups, which can be replaced (hopefully you could reuse the gold-colored covers as I don't know many good pickups that come with the gold cover option) but then you have to judge the guitar as if it was at the 400€+ range and that would probably not work as much in Harley Benton's favor.

What I respect is that while most other manufacturers focus first on the looks & finish of their low end products leaving the 'playability' to suffer, Harley Benton (or Thomann to be precise) didn't forget that this is still supposed to be a music instrument and that people are supposed to play it instead of just to look at it. Mind you, it still is gorgeous to look at (I wouldn't mind even turning down the looks a notch for a better set of pickups or tuners) but it's also fully usable once you put it in your hands without any excessive work needed. My first guitar was considerably worse to play while it was probably more expensive, and it didn't look nearly as good.

That being said, some of the visual issues (like the inlay and paint cracks, chips and scratches) is something I would not expect from a guitar that's not a B-Stock, even at this price point, and Thomann should definitely consider upping their QC game. Given that it's quite playable and given the price, these issues are not enough for me to go through the hassle of returning it, but if it were more expensive guitar (say 500€+) I'd return it in a heartbeat.