Fusion-III HSH Roasted FNT : Super Strat?

I wanted something with roasted maple and I wanted a guitar with HSH pickup configuration. I chose this one. Pros (and there are many). The top on this model looks truly beautiful. The flamed Maple neck is beautiful, both in looks and in feel. It is fairly thin and the unfinished back of the neck is super slippery, no sticking there! The stainless steel frets are of medium thickness and fairly tall, perfectly finished, nothing sticking out or sharp. The locking tuners function perfectly both in string locking and tuning the instrument, smooth and accurate. The tremolo arm and bridge unit are classy, the pop in arm is a blessing. The trem action has no fault that I have found (more about that in the cons!). The guitar is very light.

Cons. There are only two. The misery of the horrible string retainer bar above the nut. With it fitted the tuning is lost every time the trem is used. This bar has been scrapped on newer models of this guitar, mine was in the first batch produced. I took it off within five minutes of playing and straight away the tuning was perfect. I used it in this way for a while with no problem of strings jumping out of the nut but I was not confident so I bought a pair of the Graphtec trees and fitted both (I think one for the B and E strings would be sufficient) and the problem was solved. I bought some short stainless screws and put them in the retainer bar holes to tidy the headstock as I did not want to use filler and make a mess. My second con may just be personal due to my playing style, but I find the five way selector switch a little too far forward and I regularly brush it and change pickup settings when I am strumming. If all the controls could be moved 20mm towards the back of the guitar I think that would be an advantage. I find the same problem on my Strat and my Stirling Silhouette as well so perhaps it is just me. Whether it is a con or not, I find the pickups very bright and I am considering replacing the neck pickup with a more rounded one although I have no idea which. Jonathan Koe of YouTube has put a Seymour Duncan set in his, see his revue, and they sound magical.

Overall, I am very happy with my purchase.