Harley Benton TE90 FLT set up

If you bought the individual parts for this guitar - even if you bought the CHEAPEST available to you at retail prices - you couldn't put it together for anywhere near the £115 Thomann price tag o this guitar. Tusq nut... tuners... reverse-headstock neck... green and black finished body... hard tail strat bridge... tuners... filtertron style pickups...pots, capacitor, jack socket and switch... Well it's obvious. It would be a fair bit more than £115 and in reality a LOT more than that if you bought a ready-finished body with matching headstock-finished headstock neck.
This guitar came closer to being playable than many budget priced HBs I've encountered in the past. Yes, it needed the action adjusting; the nut slots and the truss rod. Yes there were some clusters of high frets on an overall 'undulating' fingerboard (when under string loading) that I was able to clear up. But they're getting closer. A bit better fret levelling and end-softening work... a bit more time getting a low 1st fret action and HB would be there. As usual I did that work on this guitar - plus I fitted a couple of Tusq string trees to compliment the black Tusq nut so we're still looking at the purchase price + shipping (£125 all in) + my set up fee (minus the purchase cost of the Tusq nut) and plus the £14 for a pair of Tusq string trees. So a total of £125 + £128 + £25 onward courier postage = £278 all-in for a great-looking guitar that's now set up with a lovely low buzz + choke free action and which plays and stays in tune. That's NOT a lot of money all-round... but it IS striking that the work to 'finish' the guitar ends up being as much as buying the guitar. That's the true cost, as it always is. Of course, if you can do that set up work yourself then you get a £125 guitar that requires some investment of your time and skill. But the point here is that without the set up work (the careful attention to fret condition and levelness, nut slots etc) then the guitar IS still un-finished. The problem is that when we're young or lacking in experience we accept that the guitar we buy is 'finished' and ultimately live with the constraints that the factory 'finish' imposes on us.