Harley Benton SC-550 II FTF

Honestly I was a little concerned about damage from shipping but Thomann did not disappoint. I received the item with no issues.
The guitar is beautiful. It is however darker than the pictures but nonetheless still a very nice looking instrument. It's also lighter than I anticipated.

The pickups are thick with decent definition. The fretwork is excellent for the price but I will likely do some sanding to round the edges.

The intonation is a tad off but the action is perfect. I was a little worried about fret issues since it's tough to work with stainless steel.

The volume/tone knobs feel a bit flimsy and cheap. But I had a feeling about them that's why I bought new knobs ahead of time.

The machine heads are decent but plasticky and greenish. So I also bought regular chrome Klusons.

All in all very happy. No surprises. Thanks Thomann and to the excellent customer service people.

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EDIT: A few months in and want to give an update.

Still a good guitar but the toggle switch got buggy--the bridge pickup toggle stops working and requires some fiddling with to get it to work.

I did notice that the pickups are a bit noisy.

Will probably replace the toggle switch and maybe replace the pickups.

Upon opening the box and wrapping, the guitar looked absolutely stunning. I closely inspected the guitar, and finish wise, it was perfect. My only criticism being the flamed maple top, it was not evenly flamed, the right side was perfect, but the left side was not a good match. Another small problem (for me) being the frets, they were rather dull and not gleaming as in the promotional pictures, so they were duly polished with a fret rubber. Also, the frets were rather sharp at the ends, but a half hour with a fret file later, they were much more comfortable to handle while playing. Sound wise it was superb, on par I would say with similar guitars two to three times the price. The guitar had a reasonable 'set up', the intonation and neck straightness being good.I was surprised to see full size potentiometers for volume and tone, and the control cavity lid was foil screened, as was the pickup selector cavity lid. The PU selector itself was of a good quality. The pau ferro fretboard was bone dry and crying out for a drink, so I applied several applications of lemon oil. Needless to say I changed the strings, mainly because I only use 9-42 gauge. So to sum up, a fantastic guitar considering the price, there were a few small glitches, more annoying than being a problem. I am pleased with my new guitar.

For the price this is a good to very good guitar. However I found that the one I bought had issues. String height is set very high even for me and I like to get my fingers under the strings to make bends. It's pretty much at the top of the bridge saddle pegs. I tried to lower this action but then found out I was getting a lot of fret buzz which was unplayable. So I am left with a pretty slow neck all in all. This is slightly frustrating as I was expecting better.
However you can't argue with the finish and the hardware nor the sound. These are all very good. The guitar is heavy and well made. It is a very heavy guitar coming from a background in strat style guitars. Unfortunately I probably won't use it as much as I would have liked because of the string height issues. Neck relief did nothing to help in the matter and neither did going for a straighter neck which only made fret buzz worse.
Edited review to give it more stars because the pickups are excellent.