Harley Benton Fusion-III HSS Roasted OMS Reviews

Excellent guitar

What a great guitar this is! Needed a little setup (lowering pickups & action) and that's it! Frets somewhat scratchy like most reviewers mention but no biggy...good useable sounds.....awesome for the money!

24 fret strat?

this guitar is exceptional and only reason a couple 4s, the neck was a bit dry from factory and scratchy some on frets, I've bought 8 HB and this was low man on totem pole quality wise but I would buy again. After oiled board played great. the HB bridge not my cup of tea and may replace but otherwise it's a fantastic buy and a great addition.

neat strat

First of all - the guitar has beautiful neck - the roasted flames of the maple are visible nicely throught the whole fretboard! Finish is without any issues.

.. Tuners are great - compared to hi-end Schallers or Gotohs they are not as smooth, but the MOST IMPORTANT part - the locking wheel, shaft and locking pin are working great. On the cheap locking tuners, the pin inside the shaft, that is pinching the string when locked, is usually of small diameter - this results in slipping and unability to lock, especially the thin E string fully - because when fully locked, the string is not pinched by the 100% of the locking pin surface (if that makes sense..).

Nut is cut OK. All in all, the guitar is holding the tuning very well, even with 'slight' divebombs - compared to all of the other non-locking tremolos (vintage 6 point trems especially....), you can be very happy.

Fretwork is where there is a place for improvement - you need to polish the frets, because they are crusty out of factory. There is no buzz with semi-low action (1,3mm on high E, 1,7mm on low E measured from top of 12th fret). But for the fretwork to be absolutely perfect, it will benefit from very slight leveling.. No sharp edges. Nonetheless, very usable. Just do not expect this guitar to have frets like 5000 euro custom shop mij ibanez - this exactly is where the corners are cut to match the price point, and there is just no way around that.

Tremolo and string action - be prepared to do full setup, because out of factory, the string height is 3mm on low E on 12th fret.. So this requires messing with springs tension, saddle heights and trussrod.The whammy bar can be locked inside the tremolo hole - perfectly usable and not wiggly. Other than that, the tremolo is very nice. Just do not forget to lube the nut slots with graphite, also where the knife edge meets the post, and where string meets the saddle - for the tuning stability to be exceptional.

Pickups are fairly low output, but usable. I just swapped the neck pickup for fat sounding minihumbucker

my first "Mehh" harley benton

Out of the box was actually pretty impress. Guitar is actually extremely pretty. That Green color its just fantastic. The mix of white, silver and green its just very appealing for me.

The pick ups:

-Played through a Neural DSP Quad Cortex-

-Played with multiple clean/high gain amps and different setups-

When the bridge pick up is in Humbucker, its very harsh. Very aggressive, but not a controlled aggressiveness that you might think. I felt quite of high end spiking all around. Bottom end is lacking pretty much.

I noticed that when the Bridge is coil split, it doesn't sound like a strat twangy sound we all now. Its still pretty high and aggressive.

Mid pick up Is ok. just an average mid pick up. Not really much to describe.

Position Mid/neck, sounds okey-ish, but not really bassy like you would expect. That John Mayer - Slow dancing in a burning room first rift doesn't sound like a raw version of it. Missing that round raw mid-bass tone.

The bridge pickup is once again, not really special.

Im aware that this pick ups are just bound to be exchanged by majority of people that buy this guitar, but you maybe would like to know this in advance.

Bridge and locking tuners + Nut:

All perfect here. This pieces are great. Decent quality on all of them.

Bridge feels very solid, looks good and its not a pain in the hand at all.

the neck:

This was one of the factors that made me rethink on keeping the guitar or not.

The neck its a bit thinner that the normal strat neck BUT feels and pretty sure, is wider. Feels like a 7 string guitar, or that it could accommodate a 7th string on the neck.

The roasted pattern on the neck of my guitar was really cool, the hand can glide easily.

Overall, this guitar its just pretty, but when I played it, the magic was not there. It wasnt just comfortable in the hand

I sent the guitar back.