Fusion-III HSH Roasted FNT : Great super-strat style guitar with a lovely neck

I bought this guitar as a Christmas gift for myself. It arrived in short time with good packaging. Looks are of course subjective but to me this is a great-looking guitar.

What is good:

- the most outstanding feature on this guitar is the gorgeous roasted maple neck, this not only looks really, really good, it is also a joy to play on. Because it is unfinished it feels really smooth and fast

- fretwork is excellent

- overall finish on the guitar is good with nothing to complain about

- retainer bar has been replaced by staggered tuners and a "rolling" string tree for the top two strings - with this configuration the guitar maintains tuning fairly well even with extensive use of the tremolo

- setup of the guitar was pretty good right out of the box, intonation close to perfect, strings a bit high but that was easily fixed

- the locking tuners feel really solid

- electronics and solder work on the inside of the guitar looks good

So-so:

- the pickups are better than I expected and the humbuckers sound pretty good even in the coil-split mode. I might still replace them since I think this guitar could deserve even better pickups. The pickups output is sort of medium but since play mostly blues and rock this fits well. Metal players might want hotter pickups.

- the veneer top is pretty but looks a bit flat and one-dimensional on closer inspection

Not so good:

- the nut is a bit roughly cut and I think I will replace it

- pickups are poorly mounted and not parallell to the strings, most notably the middle pickup tilts fairly heavily towards the neck. Havn't tried to correct this so I don't know if it is easily fixed

Overall and value for money

I've never owned a Harley-Benton before, but I must say this lives up to the positive reviews I read about it before buying. Take away the roasted maple neck and I would say this is a guitar on the same level as a top-of-the line Squier (like the Classic Vibes). Add back that great neck and you got yourself a good deal. Sure It's not a Charvel, Suhr or Ibanez AZ but I think you get an awful lot of guitar for your 400 euro with this one!