Harley Benton Fusion-III HSH Roasted FNT 5-stars Reviews

Super Strat for Blues?

Due to the current pandemic, I'm not playing out. I have yet to gig out with the guitar.

I've had the guitar for over a month. First what I liked about the guitar. I was always wondering what the big deal was with "roasted" necks. Well, if you haven't tried one, please do. This is the smoothest playing neck ever. I have over 20 guitars, Tele with maple, Les Paul with rosewood, Schecter with ebony. IMHO this is the best neck of all.

Next the pickups.

I wanted a guitar that could do it all, humbucker and single coil. First of all despite some of the You Tube reviews, I like the pickups and will not be changing them. The humbuckers would not be confused with the Seymour Duncan Custom 59's but they have a good tone, compare them to the Epiphone Probuckers. When split I'm able to get very close to the Fender Strat sound, playing clean, think of Jimmy Vaughan or Robert Cray. I have played this through my Fender Hotrod Deluxe to check out the tube sound with volume, and the Fender Champion 50 XL for around the house. I was able to get myriad tones with both amps.

Looking forward to gigging out with this.

The guitar was set up very well, I have a slew of luthier tools, but needed none. I adjusted the action and intonation. I had to go to You Tube for a video on how to adjust the Wilkinson bridge, which BTW is much better than the Fender vintage. Electronics all worked well. Cavity is shielded, no name large pots, smooth action on volume and tone, with no big drop offs. Locking tuners are a real plus on any guitar with a tremolo, BTW the arm is adjustable, no flapping around.

Cosmetics.

The guitar cosmetics were well done, no flaws found. The flamed finish looks great. I had to get use to a little different style of picking as there's less than 3/4" inch between pickups. I had ordered the "bundle" which is supposed to come with a HB gig bag, it came with a GEWA economy gig bag, which I actually consider an upgrade as I can compare this with my HB.

The only negative was the shipping of the guitar. I was aware that there would be delays due to the current situation, however there was a mix up in either their shipping or DHL. The order showed my address as correct, but somehow the mailing label hat was printed out had a zip code from an old address over 300 miles away. It was lost for a while until someone in the Postal Service here corrected the address by hand. The good news is that there was no damage despite a round about route to get to me.

Question, "Is this guitar suitable for the Blues?"

Answer, "All guitars are. It's the player that puts the Blues out there."

Yes, when I return to gigging I will be playing this guitar, but for the B.B. King songs it'll have to be my Gibson.

I'm happy to have this guitar in my arsenal.

Nice for the price

Waited until I had owned and played this guitar for over a month instead of the usual reviews straight out of the box before writing my review.Great guitar for the money and the roasted maple neck is beautiful and feels good in the hand and makes the guitar a real pleasure to play.The fit and finish was excellent and even after a month of examination I still cannot find any flaws.The tremolo stays in tune well and the coil split works if thats your thing.The only minus for me with this guitar is that the pickups it comes with are far to bright for my tastes,but a change somewhere in the future will solve this.Overall I think this guitar is worth the price asked and the stainless frets and roasted maple neck make this a no brainer.Thanks.

Great guitar, much better than its name or pricetag.

As said in the heading. This is an excellent instrument and one of my best purchases ever. Great finish (PRS charges 400 extra euros for this), excellent neck, feels very good, not the superfast Wizard type ones but still very much shreddable. The roasted maple is just briliant. Tuners are from another planet, much better than my Music Man Majesty's ones (a guitar worth 3800 euros). PUs are totally ok and very versatile, not the best for modern metal or prog so I upgraded them and also had the guitar set up (this will be needed).

Really good value, I recommend it 100%.

Everything was good

Except there's ringing near the headstock whenever I strum a bit hard. Metallic ringing sound as if some little bell is ringing inside the tuners. I tried to loosen and tighten the tuner locks but didn't help. There are some fret buzz. Other than that... it's superb. Nice guitar with roasted neck.

The changes on this newer Fusion-ll model make it a great deal.

HB has really stepped up their game and the recently released Harley Benton Fusion-II HSH Roasted FNT is just fantastic and came well packaged and pretty well setup. I absolutely LOVE this guitar! It has stainless frets which I chose to polish because there were a few that had some spots and now they are all nice and shiny. It also had a couple of tiny black specks under the top finish but am I going to whine about any of that? Hell no! When you consider what you're getting for the money this model is beyond an amazing value. It plays great, looks great and sounds great. There is nothing about it that I feel the need to change.

I recently purchased a Classic Vibe Squier and this guitar just blows it away and it even cost less! The satin finished flamed roasted maple neck is gorgeous and feels great and very smooth. It's a joy to play on and is a modern C shape and not real skinny or thin (talking depth wise) like some have said about the previous model. It is actually a tiny bit thicker than my Squier. You probably shouldn't ever have to worry about fret sprout or worn frets with that neck. No crackling noise from the controls like on the Squier. You should consider getting one if you haven't already. I mean c'mon...roasted maple neck, stainless steel frets, beautiful flamed maple top, Wilkinson trem, Graph Tech nut and STAGGERED LOCKING tuners for less than $400! Talk about bang for your buck! Great job on this model HB!

EDIT! - Well I still love this guitar and still think it is a great value - HOWEVER - I must say that I am very disappointed in the SS frets. They must be a low quality of stainless steel as I have only had this guitar for 4 months and already can see some fret wear! FYI - I only use regular nickel wound strings and although I do play a lot this is not a good sign. Had to lower the quality rating by a star.

Very good, but...

The guitar is excellent! The hype is real. I was worried about the build quality, but it is actually on par with WMI Korea. I've held the new Japan-made Ibanez RG550 Genesis and it had way worse and rougher frets. This means to me that Harley Benton quality control is on their game. Except...

The strings! Come on. Extremely corroded strings on a new guitar? The strings looked like they have already been played for year?!?!? I'm not talking about just being discolored. I'm saying the strings had thick corrosion on the nut area. All of them.

The pickups are just, meh! I already ordered Seymour Duncans for it.

I would have given it a perfect rating even with an average sounding set of pickups, but the strings really was a disappointment. Wish I could post the pictures here...

Premium Top Notch Guitar! You will never regret!

Received the guitar within a week after order placed. Fast shipping. Thumbs up! Unboxing and it gave me a surprised as the guitar was exactly as described in the website. The looks of the natural finish is so stunning coupled with matching headstock. Plus point of this guitar is the roasted maple neck. With the offered price vs the specs that I gotten for this guitar I am truly honoured to be part of the Harley Benton family. Guitar plays great out of the box. The feel of the neck is fantastic and smooth as the neck finish is satin. The only setback of this guitar is the pickup which sound slightly muddy (does not have the clarity) which I can anytime swap out to a better pickup. Tremolo and the locking tuning machines caused the guitar to stay in tune always. Will definitely recommend to get this guitar If you wanted a super start. Overall, I am a happy owner of this guitar. Well done. Harley Benton! You have hit a home run!. Keep up the good work!

Fantastic bang for your buck

Can't argue with the cost to features ratio on this thing. Stainless steel frets, locking tuners, HSH with coil split, spoke wheel truss access - all fantastic features. You'd have a hard time finding any sub-£1000 guitar with all of these features.

Sound quality leaves a little to be desired, but it's nothing that a pickup change couldn't fix. The neck and middle pickups sound absolutely fine, but the bridge pickup is where this guitar is let down. The shrill, ice-picky tone from the bridge pickup is hard to dial out at the best of times, but in high-gain metal it's virtually unavoidable.

Overall quality is fantastic. Pickups seem to be de-threading and unravelling bits of thread which isn't a fantastic look, but as I've mentioned, I'll be swapping them out as soon as I get a chance.

Overall, it's a fantastic amount of instrument for the money. Setup was pretty fantastic for a budget guitar - while the fret ends weren't dressed perfectly, they had no sharp edges, which at this price point is a win in my book.

Very Pleased I will be buying moe Harley Benton Products

Great guitar

This guitar is terrific and has a wide range of tones especially with the coil split pickups.

I love the roasted maple neck.

I was surprised with the quality and play-ability straight from the box.

My only issue with the guitar is fret buzz. The guitar needs to have the frets leveled and polished.

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.

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!

Noice

The wood is luscious, a real pleasure to look at. Even the out-of-sight back of the neck and back of the body are very nice. The chrome tuner heads and tremolo all all bright and unblemished. The finish is almost immaculate; a small metal tab on the collar (?) of the pickup selector switch is the only blemish I can see. The tab could be filed or snipped down.

It has taken a few days to get used to semi-jumbo frets, once I stopped squeezing the strings to the fretboard they are easy to play. 5 way switch and 2 way selector produce a big range of distinct tones. The voicings vary by tone and depth.

Cory Mura suggested looking at this one and he was right.

Harley Benton stepped up their game beyond recognition with this guitar.

I simply don't know where to start. HB is a "bang for buck" brand and most reviews will tell you "It's good for the money" with an emphasis on for the money. There'll be some flaws here and there.

This guitar, however? Absolutely not. 400 bucks is quite some money for a unknown brand but the specs this guitar carries you'll only find in guitars at a 800-1000 euro pricepoint.

Sound:

The guitar is incredibly versatile. 2 screaming humbuckers and 1 single coil usually mean you've got stuff for the distorted high gains and stuff for the sweet, acoustic-like pantydroppers. 5-way switch only compliments this.

This guitar, however, has full coil splitting which means you can split the humbuckers into single coils so you can absolutely get whatever kinda sound out of this guitar.

Playability:

Playability is through the roof. The roasted maple neck not only looks incredible, it feels incredible too. It's thin, but not too thin like an Ibanez. It's not thick like a Gibson or even a Fender neck. I'd say it sits firmly in between the Fender and Ibanez necks.

Everything stays in tune super, super well and the it all feels like a proper high-quality guitar.

The looks:

I think the guitar is just dropdead gorgeous and there's no flaws. I've purchased several HB guitars and sometimes they come with some visual flaws here 'n there. This thing, however? Hell no.

I simply can't recommend this guitar enough. if you're in the market for a superstrat, look no further. You could get a Ibanez (I have a RG350DX in white - it's about 400-450 if I believe so correctly which I love dearly but it's simply not as much bang for buck or even as good as this guitar is) for the same money but honestly? It won't even come near this thing.

Highly recommended, 5/5.