Cort Hiram Bullock Signature II

FOr the dough, they're not bad. Didn't plug it in, but wanked on one a bit at the last NAMM.

 

Don't recall..

 

Cort makes nice guitars for the money. For an hsh under $1000 I would check out the godin freeway.

 

Well my Cort is a different model and was $60 used.
2000 Indonesia CL200

I did have to do some tweaking. I drilled out the body holes so the neck screws just passed through rather than screwed thru the body wood, opened up the nut slots, and worked on the positioning of the wrapover stop/bridge for better intonation. The grub screws for this face the studs, minor pain. Guitar is not light. Action is quite low, sustain long, and after tweaking intonation fine and stays in tune.Pretty decent guitar. I imagine a HB model is Korean and the neck screw holes on the body the proper "pass thru" design/implementation .

 

I don't know if Carvin is readily available in your part of the world but the "Bolt" series is something worth considering. I have a Bolt neck on my parts-o-caster and it is my main player over lots of production models.
You could also go with a standard strat style and put single coil size humbuckers, my 3 main strats are loaded this way and i absolutely love it.
Or if your woodworking skills are up to snuff try taking decent strat style and routing a "bathtub" cavity and use the pickups of your choice along with a pickguard from Warmouth.

 

id check out carvin, or id go the warmoth route if your willing to go the parts way.

 

Cort also makes a Neil Zaza siggy model, and it also comes with Tonepros, Duncans, Sperzels, etc. The one at Namm played like crap. Horribly setup, sharp fret ends, etc.