Harley Benton JA-60CC LH Lake Placid Blue

As a left-handed guitar player, I do not have many affordable options available on the market. This guitar was meant to be a more jazzy/bluesy counterpart to my main guitar, an Ibanez, but it became much more than that.

Pros:
+ The build quality: Holy monkeys, is the finishing good on this guitar! Roasted maple, tune-o-matic bridge, AlNiCo pickups, and Laurel fretboard under 200 euros? You betcha'!
+ The neck is awesome. The frets could have been a bit more polished on the edges, but there's no need for a file here, as they are perfectly comfortable at touch. With the right action, this is the perfect beginner-friendly neck.
+ The tune-o-matic is surprisingly easy to adjust, even when the strings are a bit tense. I got near-perfect intonation.
+ The warm sound with a nice Jazzmaster "twang", achievable out-of-the-box and improvable with the right setup. Sounds great on cleans too, mostly because the pickups are surprisingly well-built.

Cons:
- The foil on the guitar was really difficult to peel and got caught underneath the knobs. Might be a downer or might be just my poor coordination when unwrapping stuff.
- Not for every genre, but I guess you already knew that. Heavy distortion means a bit of buzzing on any single coil, classvi, JM, or P-90.
- The fretboard might be a bit short for some experienced players, but I am not among them, so I love it.

P.S: I am not a fan of these types of machine heads in general, but I don't like them on everything from Fenders and Squires to no name guitars. Surprisingly (again), the HB ones were better than average.

I really like the sound of the guitar (my first Harley Benton): the pickups are actually much more versatile than I expected. I love the neck, both the profile and the matte finish are really nice - it probably feels as good as the best guitars I've ever held in my hand. Finish overall is done very nicely and no issues can be found there.

There were some negative sides as well - it's impossible to properly intonate, even after flipping the saddle on the G string (which isn't really doable on the bridge the guitar comes with as the clip holding the saddle screw will deform once you remove and replace it). It seems like the bridge is positioned too close to the neck.

My guitar needed a fret leveling out of the box.

I'd also love if they'd compensate the Tune-O-Matic style bridge saddle slots to match the radius of the fingerboard, otherwise it's hard to get a low action without the two middle strings buzzing. It's an easy thing to fix though by cutting the slots in the saddles lower with nut files.

I wouldn't recommend it as the first guitar unless you are willing to take it to a decent luthier for a proper set up and fret work.