I played guitar for almost 30 years now, and i had many cheap and expensive gear through that time. I am not guitar hero by any means but i manage. Always been a Les paul/humbucker fun, but ocassionally felt in love with telecasters.
Features
Great specs for guitar within this price range. Every part specified works very well, neck is little bigger in my hands than i expected, but feel very natural. Given the humbackers and tremolo this is tele only by design, but it feels like a tele under the hands. Split coil is great option but i am not fun of the pull pots, i ll rather have switch or push push knob.
Sound
This is not tipical sound for telecaster. It is solid humbucker tone, very dark, but in a good way. That tone will not be for everyone, because it sounds like yout tone pot is on a half way. I really like that tone, it is somewhat comparable with my 1990 Gibson LP studio. Clean sounds are good, especially on neck split coil position. Cleans very vell on the volume pot. With marshall/Tube screamer combination this guitar really shines, od/dist sounds are very good but dark, creamy sounding. This could be a potential problem in band situation, you might want to add additional treble freq with amp/pedals eq.
Split coils sound are lacking in volume, and only sounds good at neck position.
Quality
Last Hb guitar i have ordered, Lp Custom line, i returned because of quality issues. This one, which is actally cheaper, are really good instrument. I checked every detail, and found only one, barely noticable error in paint job. Paint, binding, hardware, neck joint, neck and body work are really good, especially for this price point. With tremolo use, it goes out of tune pretty quick, but with out of the box setup; professional setup, i assume, will solve that problem. Frets will need some minor polishing. Stock strings are actually pretty good.
Conclusion
This guitar is nothing like my expensive Gibsons / Schecters / Kramers in the terms of feel when playing. But it does sound very good (with that specific dark sound), and it is really quality bulit. I will have no problem going on stage with it (with eq in mind). I think this is the best relatively cheap guitar that i ever owned and its already earned its place at the wall with the others.