Fusion-III HH Roasted SSP : Silver beauty

Ordered this one a few days after Fusion III series was announced, so there were no reviews

TL;DR: it's a great guitar! Especially for its price

Now let's dig into details

PROS:

- Look. Visually it is amazing, WAY more beautiful in real life compared to photos. Sparks and shines like fireworks, so gorgeous

- Also, top finish does not collect fingerprints or dust

- Spec list. You get roasted maple neck, steel frets, coils split, two point trem, truss rod adjustment wheel at the last fret, locking tuners, nubone nut and that top finish - so many features - for only 400 eur. You heard me

- Roasted maple neck feels fantastic. Smooth, convenient, nice profile, satin feel. Also - do I need to say this - it's beautiful

- Frets aligned well, fret ends are nice, but they are not smooth out of the box. I've polished them and they are soooo good now

- Really like matte finish on trem, pickups and furniture. Feels nice too

- Pickups are great, coil split sounds great, maybe they have slightly low output, but I really love their tone, both clean and distorted

- Tuners are fine, no problems with them so far. Nice to have locking mechanism - works great, very convenient

- Trem is fine (except one problem - read the cons), works great, set it up in a floating position, holds tuning perfectly, no matter how wild your divebombs are

CONS:

- Trem was the main problem. When I initially set it up, it worked really weird. It got stuck in random positions when you use it. It absolutely didnt want to return in its balance point, it didnt flutter and I could not control it at all. It took me some time to figure out the problem. Basically, the size of the cavity for tremolo in guitar body did not match the size of tremolo (if it makes sense), so inner part of the tremolo rubbed the wall of this cavity. My guitar tech have slightly increased this cavity (tenths or hundredths of a millimeter) and problem disappeared. It was tricky to find out the problem, but now i have no questions to tremolo, it works as intended

- Pickup switch made some strange sounds while switching, but one spray of oil contact cleaner took that away

- If you want frets smooth out of the box - you need to polish them

- Have some question to retainers, not sure if they work well, hear weird noises while tuning

Neutral thoughts:

- Out of the box it needs tuning and adjustments (as every other new instrument) - action, truss rod, trem, frets etc. You should keep it in mind. Strongly recommend going to your guitar tech

- Change strings immediately - stock ones are not good (old and rusty)

- Took one trem spring away - think with 10/46 strings 3 springs are too much. With two trem works great, no problems

- Tone push/pull is too loose - common problem with push/pulls, but sometimes when you use coil split, your tone knob turns around, prefer more tight pots

- Volume pot is very close to the bridge, it is hard sometimes to change volume when you use whammy bar

- You should know that almost everything is inherited from Fusion II series, these two versions are basically the same guitar. Not sure if it bothers anyone (not me)

All being said, I absolutely LOVE this guitar. After fixing this annoying bridge problem guitar feels nice, plays nice, sounds nice, looks fantastic. Everything is just so good, when you pick it up you just want to play it and do not let go at all. Love this guitar