Harley Benton Fusion-III HSS Roasted SP Reviews

BUY IT

For the money you cannot buy something better. THE END.

Great beginner guitar

My first electric guitar. I've been playing this guitar for a year now. Very comfortable, love the sound (but to be honest I have nothing to compare with :) ) and looks great. Happy with purchase!

Worse than Expected

Well, these guitars are supposed to be a good bang-for-the-buck. This arrived in unplayable condition. The features are nice but what good are they when there are chunks of wood missing at the fret ends?

A welcome addition to any lineup!

After a basic set up and some fret polishing, this guitar is great!

Why Pay More...??

I play pubs & clubs in UK covers band and never keen on using my 'expensive' guitars in case of damage ..I own a Fusion T which is pretty good but was really impressed with this fusion lll .

Delivered just after xmas ,a set up and new strings then a couple of gigs to bed in,then a quick reset up ,now im using it on all gigs since (only 10 so far but be with me for another 3 this weekend)

The neck is super fast (similiar to my 92 Ibanez RG550) frets are good and trem stays in tune......my only fault was i wanted the deep pink but my stupid finger & brain pressed wrong button on phone...!!!!

Tho on saying that the shell pink looks cool under stage lights

And its even cheaper than last month

Cannot be beaten for the price!

Is this a pro level guitar? No. Does it have the potential to be? Definitely. Mine required a set up when it arrived, but that's not unusual. One of the volume knobs had come off, thankfully it hadn't caused any damage. However, for the price, this guitar cannot be beaten. If you're willing to give it a set up and some new pickups, you will have a guitar as good as any premium priced instrument.

A great, inexpensive workhorse

HB instruments' prices always seemed suspiciously low to me, but after a friend of mine, a much more experienced musician, vouched strongly for them, i decided to give one a try.

And what do you know, it did not disappoint. After a quick setup at a local guitar tech, this axe feels and plays like an instrument double its price. Solid build, good quality components - locking tuners, wilkinson trem, great feeling neck, what more one can want? The pickups are nothing special, but they're workable, probably will swap them out in a couple months. Coil split works and sounds fine. For some reason though, the volume pot is a lot harder to turn than the tone pot, thought that it would be more comfortable the other way around. Not a flaw, just required a bit of getting used to. Also, it came with a fresh set of 10/46s, which was a nice touch.

With delivery and customs services, it came out still cheaper than even cheapest Squier Affinities in these parts (Russia). Overall, great instrument, 9/10 probably will order a HB bass soon.

UPD: After gigging with it for a little bit, the pickup switch started losing contact in the neck position. Rendered the neck position practically unusable.

Well, here we go again.

This is my third fusion. I've got two fusion 2s and now a new fusion 3. And though the tremolo, wood and general feel is great, 5 star, there ase some things that really made me wonder if I'd buy again.

First of all, there is lack of QC. My guitar had a crack between the neck and middle pickups. The crack was in color and I believe in the wood too. There is no way that crack was caused in transportation. I sent the guitar back and about 2 weeks later they send me a new one. In the new one there is a bolt missing, and there is a scratch in the neck near the headstock. Pfft (disappointment continues)

Secondly, there was a difference in the finish of the two guitars they send me. In the first one, the cracked one, the finish was harsh and overall bad. Really bad. In the second one they send the finish is perfect. A perfect satin finish, slicky fast feel.

Lastly, As I've said in another review of this guitar model there is an immediate need for a good setup. The action is sky high and the trush rod needs adjusting as the intonation sucks.

Pfft I feel so bad making this review. I really love the guitar model, but the lack of Quality Control(so a possibility of a need to return the guitar) and the really bad setup is something you need to take into consideration when ordering one!

Cheers!

Money well spent!

I ordered this as I wanted an HSS Strat / Superstrat style kind of guitar with a trem.

I got it after 4 working days (+ weekend), so it arrived 2 days earlier than estimated.

The packaging was ok, but not a single scratch on the guitar and the box was handled well.

Looks:

It's ping. It's satin. It's got a roasted maple neck and roasted flame maple fingerboard. Of course it's going to look stunning.

No scratches or bad finish spots, no dents, very few tooling marks. I haven't found any flaws here.

Setup:

It came well set up out of the box. I might have to do some minor tweaks to have it to my liking, but this is purely subjective. There factory setup is great and I might end up leaving it as is, but there are some minor tweaks that I usually do to all my guitars that I might do on this one as well.

The trem also returns to pitch pretty well after smaller dives. I haven't given it the Van Halen treatment yet, but for lighter use / smaller dives it's close to perfect.

The trem is a bit stiff, but that might just be the springs that needs breaking in or minor adjustments, not a big issue so I haven't dug into it just yet.

Sound:

I've heard complaints about the pickups, but I can't confirm these.

To my ears these pickups sound good. I really, really like them.

The coil split is actually pretty good. It does that strat, bridge single coil pretty well.

Rolls off really well on all pickups as well, especially the bridge. I can go from a pretty rocking 80s hair tone to RHCP just by rolling the volume, it's great!

Overall:

It looks good. It sounds good. It feels great! (That neck is amazing)

I don't have any complaints so far, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend this guitar if you're looking for a cheap option of a HSS superstrat style guitar. This has made me join the "HB punches way above it's price" bandwagon for sure.

Nice guitar with great features, but faced some problems

First about looks. Shell Pink looks fantastic. The mate finish looks great. with only minor tiny flaws here and there. Neck was good, frets nice and polished, would't scratch your hands. On my particular guitar there was only 1 mark of fret polishing on neck finish, but that's fine by me

Range of pickups sounds are great — you can get decent gain sound on bridge and Strat-like clean on the neck at 4-th position. I love it.

Only problem I faced with this fusion in strings action. The lowest action I could get is 2mm on 12th fret of low E. From the box action was even higher. May be it's an issue of only my particular guitar. Guys at the local guitar shop told me they would deepen trem screws holes and slightly alter neck angle to get the action I'm used to — 1.2 to 1.4 mm