Harley Benton ST-20HSS LH SBK

Picked this up for my fiancée as a first time purchaser from here. Finding a lefty is tough, let alone finding a nice looking one that isn't bog standard. She is VERY happy with it.

The knobs are knobby, the switches are switchy, and the pickups seem to be all working and wired correctly. My only complaint with the hardware side of things is that the tuning keys seem to all have a little bit of play.. Not enough to worry about right away, but it's likely they'll need replacing in the next couple of years.

The finish on this guitar is beautiful, the pics don't really do it justice. I will definitely consider buying something for myself here soon!

(misc details below)
Shipping to Canada took 8 days via UPS, I chose that so I didn't have to be concerned with Canada Post's handling of packages.

Packing was sufficient, though just barely.. Outer box had a LOT of dead open space left and although there would have been room on all sides of the inner box, there was only paper padding on one side.

I hate Strats. I mean I really hate Strats, and here's why. Up until relatively recently if you had the misfortune to be born left-handed and wanted to buy an affordable guitar you had a few options: you could choose between a sunburst, black or red Strat copy and they were all usually junk unless you managed to get hold of a Squire (or so I'm told). It signified being marginalised. That's reason number one.

Reason number two, I hate that horrible clean sound that they make that was so prevalent in some 80's music. Urgh, revolting.

Reason three, if Dave Gilmore plays a Strat then there must be something wrong with me, right?

So, I needed a guitar with a whammy for one song and I actually really liked the look of the satin black with tortoise shell scratch plate, but was even happier that a humbucker sat next to the bridge, so I bought one.
The playability of this thing is great, I love the neck feel and that humbucker can really honk. I've gotten so many great, unexpected sounds out of this guitar I actually feel like a complete nimrod for dismissing Strats for so long. I bought it for one song, it's now been used on countless more and I grab it instead of the acoustic when I'm noodling of an evening. I'm still more a Tele/335/LP player, but it pains me to say how much I like this thing.

How much do musicians hate being proven wrong? Well, this guitar is no mistake to make. Just go right ahead and buy one.

Points only knocked off because the finish can mark easily, good coat of wax out of the box will help with that. And I'm afraid I cannot fully forgive the clean sound in parts, but that applies to all Strats.