Harley Benton Fusion-T HH HT Roasted FNT Reviews

Great guitar, with a few issues

This is a amazing guitar for the price, no doubt, but I did recieve it with a couple of issues.

I ordered the guitar and a set of strings, and the guitar box was put in a bigger box with almost no protection inside, so it slid around quite easily. The first thing I noticed was some rubbing marks and a nick in the headstock, more than likely from shipping. Second thing I noticed was a pretty big gap in the neck pocket. Luckily I like to tinker with my guitars, so I fixed it. It had some sawdust in the neck pocket, and was screwed in loose. The last thing is that it had a grounding issue, but luckily I can fix that myself. I got a partial refund, and I bought it on sale, so I'm still happy with my purchase.

Near Perfect

I bought this as part of the 25th Anniversary deal - so the price was irresistible. This is my third Fusion-T, but the first with the roasted maple neck.

Everything about this guitar is how I would want it to be. Even the pickups are great, if you want an Alnico 5 PAF kind of sound. I have some great pickups spare (Oripure, Iron Gear) but I don't feel any need to change them, for my tastes. I love the figuring of the veneered top and the roasted neck. Some people might say there were imperfections but I like that - it's real wood. After a setup and new string s the intonation is spot-on and the tuning stable.

There Is one problem though: the frets are rough. Normally that would be expected and wouldn't be a problem. While the strings were off I gave them a good going over with a leather block and stropping compound. They are still rough. The problem is that they are stainless steel, so will require some serious work. My other two Fusion-Ts, and my two Fusions, also have stainless frets. They were fine after stropping. The ones on this guitar feel like they've been stored next to a welder. This roughness isn't going to disappear with a bit of playing. A few hours with fine Micromesh and more stropping and they will be smooth and shiny. It's worth investing the time - I just wish I didn't have to.

Other than that, this is magnificent. I love the Fusion-Ts for their huge control cavities, which make modding so easy. I just don't feel the need to mod this one. Impeccable!

Superb guitar,value for money

Well built and very playable out of the box, smooth fretwork and no flaws in the finish.

Pickups slightly harsh compared to more expensive ones but for the money no complaints.

Would recommend if on the fence.

WOW

I am 56 yrs old and literally learned to walk dragging a guitar behind me. I have owned some very high end guitars. I have 3 taylors and a vintage martin d18 right now. I can honestly say that I could not be happier with this guitar. Right out of the box i would (and will) gig with it. If I nitpick I am not sure I would call this a flamed maple neck however. It is very nice just not what i would consider flamed. This is my third HB guitar and zero complaints.

What to say...

Firstly the features are wicked, so big plus. Secondly there's ample scope to mod.

Cons - as stock it needs a few mods to make it a serious pro axe. Problems I found were 1 terrible pickups just did not sit well with any amp or pedal I don't know if my ones were a bit shoddy but I replaced them in 2 weeks.

2, mine needed a serious fret polish n wood oiling.

3 grain was dull on body veneer with little figuring but fretboard flame is nice shame about neck.

So what can be done to improve this? Well a few purchases from Fender will help. Namely a 500k tonesaver attached to volume a TBX in tone position (why do they not put tbx in every guitar is beyond me????) as the split coil on the Roswell was beyond a joke with insufficient tone.

I contemplated adding a kill switch (there's plenty of room in the control cavity) but not desired yet.

As for pick ups if you can afford Seymour Duncan the buy a perpetual Burn or 59/Custom with Alnico Pro II, if you can afford DiMarzio PAF pro and 36th Anniversary PAF if you can't afford those go to Tonerider and get Alnico 4 bridge and Alnico 2 neck. I've experienced all of these and experienced various pups in this guitar and others. The only combo that didn't work as well as I expected was dimarzio Air classics (sound great in my other guitars).

Currently running it with Irongear blues engine bridge and tonerider Birmingham in the neck.. sounds ok blues engine sounded the boss in my Kramer Baretta.

Over all get what you want make a few mods and turn this good axe into a great guitar that will see you from bedroom to stage

One of the best models out there

I'm a bass player first, but I enjoy playing guitar sometimes. This tele became my main, and remains for over two years now, even though I have much more expensive instruments. It just feels great in my hands, and when I want to play, I'm grabbing it 9 times out of 10. Total score - 5/5.

Features-wise it offers more then a regular tele or a two humbucker guitar, since it has coil-split. I wasn't expecting anything else out of it, so 5/5.

Sound is the weakest spot of the instrument. Stock Roswells are ok, but they sound worse than some other humbuckers I've tried. Swapping them is always an option, and something I'm planning to do eventually. However, they are usable, even in coil split modes. Overall it's 4/5

My particular model was from the first run, so it has issues that later models don't. First of all, the holes in the body are not properly aligned with the bridge. It's still usable, but annoying. Also the switch is horizontal, so when it's in the bridge position, it hits the volume knob. On later models they made it diagonal. I'd give it 5/5 for the new models, but mine is 4/5.

In my opinion this guitar is perfect for any newbie. It's very comfortable to play, the neck feels amazing, you have steel frets, locking tuners, stable hardtail bridge, decent humbuckers with a split mode. I honestly cannot think of a better guitar for these money.

Roasted maple

What a looker for the price. Always wanted a HH telecaster, this one might be the most bang for the buck. Great quality, you may wanna change the pickups for your taste, it is not an issue for mine tho so I will keep them. This would make a banger present for a beginner also.

Punches Way Above It's Weight

The headline says it all. It's simply hard to argue against the impressive value of stainless steel frets, a roasted maple neck, locking tuner, and excellent quality control. And the fit and finish is great, regardless of price point. Played excellent right out of the box, even though it travelled halfway across the world to get to me. I expected the pickups to be a weak point, but they are surprisingly versatile. I personally prefer AlNiCo over ceramic, but I would be lying if I said these ceramics were bad. The electronics could benefit from an upgrade, as the switch and pots feel a bit cheap, but they're certainly serviceable and on par for the price point.

Value

This guitar is unbelievably value packed. It's well crafted and has several premium features that make it attractive to both novice and experienced players. I had fairly high expectations based on what I'd seen on the web and I wasn't disappointed. It arrived surprisingly quickly in the U.S. and was beautiful, right out of the box and the setup was fine.

I only have 2 criticisms and they're pretty minor, in light of the value but It feels a tad heavy and I'm not in love with the pickups.

Pretty much unbeatable for the price

This is my main guitar for my cover band, we play mostly at weddings. For this purpose, I think there is no better guitar anywhere close to this price range. I've set it up with a set of 12-52 that works perfect for the DGCEAD tuning I play in (Viola Da Gamba tuning, look it up, it's great!) and I didn't need to touch the nut at all for this. The pickups are fairly low output and while they don't sound very special, I'm still very pleased with them since they sound well in any setting, from crystal clean (though the split settings are much, much better clean) to high gain, so I could play the entire set just on the bridge pickup if I wanted to.

I could write an entire review just about the neck on this thing because it is simply brilliant. It is not very thin, but just the right amount of girth for my hands and the roasted maple is so silky smooth (satin of course so it's never sticky). The hardtail bridge and locking tuners mean changing strings is a breeze.

As with all my Harley Benton guitars I've had so far, the frets are slightly rough but the fret edges are very well finished so your playing is not impeded. I'll probably buy a second one as a back-up at some point.

Flawless.

Remarkable guitar with excellent appointments.

The pickups may not be for everyone but I am more than satisfied with them.

Very good buy. I love this guitar. The locking tuners are outstanding. Could have used better pots.

Great guitar

Pickups suck. The rest of the guitar is great. There are some imperfections on the finish and fretboard corners are slightly inconsistent but overall I love the guitar after replacing the pickups. Ordering another one with maple neck and ebony fingerboard.

VERY DIsappoinred!!

Where do I start with this guitar. Let me start by saying I purchased this guitar at full price - it wasn't a B-Stock instrument! Poorly matched flame veneer. Badly drilled string ferrules. Dreadfully cut neck pocket resulting in badly fitted neck and overly cranked truss rod to compensate. Virtually zero output from bridge pickup, Returns procees from the UK was labrinthine so eventually gave up. Guitar works OK now after totally dismantling it, making several refinements to the neck pocket, a complete re-wire and several after market parts - including a new neck pick up. This purchase was highly anticipated, based on all the rave reviews I've read and seen. Very disappointed with this purchase!

Very good guitar and exceptional value for money

This is a good guitar with great features and is exceptional value for money.

Pros:

It's a good-looking Tele-style guitar, with a belly cut, so it's comfortable to play. It's quite light too - mine is 7lb 4oz (or 3.29Kg).

The roasted maple neck has a drag-free satin finish so no sticky hands when it's hot! I have quite a strong grip with my fretting hand, so I wear nickel sliver frets out quite quickly - the stainless steel frets on this are great and it's the first thing that attracted me to this guitar.

Good tuners, bridge, pickups and electronics offering humbucker and single coil sounds (via the coil split). The single coil sounds are better than my Baja Tele which cost £750, but not quite as smooth as my £1200 Strat (there is more bass and low mids though). I haven't owned a guitar with humbuckers before - the humbuckers sound pretty good and I probably won't change the pickups.

I went for the hardtail version as I don't use a vibrato, plus it would have been another thing to set up - this hardtail took just a quick adjustment of action and intonation.

Cons:

When it arrived, the action was a bit high and the intonation needed a little adjustment. The supplied strings only had 1 turn on the tuning posts - all of this you can adjust!

This is now my main guitar as I can play a full set using humbucker or single coils. I am stunned that it sounds better than guitars worth twice the price. If you don't want the roasted maple neck, the black or green versions are going for £268!

Outstanding value for money!

Harley Bentons Fusion-T really exceeds expectations.

For the price of the low to mid tier offerings from the big name brands you get very high end features. The main highlights are the roasted maple neck/stainless frets/spoke wheel truss rod/locking tuners.

You have to expect to do some fine tuning in terms of setting up neck relief/action. Fretwork had no sharp edges or issues but was a bit sloppy. In some places you can see tooling marks on the wood where they rounded the edges.

There were a couple areas for improvement:

Electronics used in this model are a letdown. Roswell has much better pickups that could suit this model. The pickups have a strange low output voicing and when split their output is really weak. The pots can be noisy when turning and the pull/push pot is very loose feeling.

Overall I still think this is a great purchase. Tuning stability is spectacular, action can be set very low and this roasted maple neck is on par with very high end guitars.

This guitar offers a modding platform like no other. If you address the electronics issue and get the right pickups you got a guitar that is definitely a keeper.

*Please note that the colors/pattern can vary a lot!

Outstanding guitar at this price point

I ordered this to be shipped to Sydney, Australia (along with another guitar). It arrived about a week after I placed the order, and in great condition. Here's some more detailed info:

Sound: The sound was excellent. I didn't want really hot humbuckers, which I've heard some people use against this guitar. It's not a metal guitar, the humbuckers are meant to be more nuanced. The Single coil sounds were tele-like, but not crisp enough to compete with a real tele (even a squier). But if you were deciding to only take one guitar to a gig, this could generate some decent single-coil sounds, just not the same twang you'll get from a real tele.

Feel: The frets are definitely bigger than medium jumbo. They feel great (being stainless steel), but they're bulky. Probably Jumbo frets. That's not really my thing, but it might be yours. The fret ends were smooth to the top of the neck (which is nice and thin with a comfortable satin finish), but there was fret-buzz in a couple of places between the 14-18th frets that required some levelling.

Appearance: the roasted maple neck is special. Combined with the roasted maple fretboard and the flame-maple top, all round it's a good looking guitar. Subjective, but my opinion matters enough that you've read this much of my review!

Nice guitar

Very good feel. Awesome grip. Cannot believe it's available at this price.

NICE GUITAR

I'm by no means a pro. Played bass guitar in a band in the 70s

so am no expert on this type of guitar. I was blown away by the quality , fit and finish. It was delivered to Minnesota in the USA and did arrive with a back bow in the neck and that was the only thing that i had to adjust. It came in pretty much perfect condition. Absolutely love the feel of the neck. Tuners work great. I set the action to what i like and am very happy with my purchase. I'm ordering 2 more right after this review. You can't get a guitar of this quality anywhere else for this kind of money.

Please check your guitars more carefully. Please...

To begin with, I'm from Russia.

I had to ask the tomann to exchange one instance of Fusion-T for another, since the first had a number of drawbacks - the most important of which was a white pickup in the neck position.

Yesterday I picked up another HB F-T, having paid customs duty again.

Now about the guitar - a very controversial instrument.

Pros:

1. The neck is made very well. That part of the working department is well done.

A good maple, perfectly rolled frets, excellent spikes and string springs.

2. Good quality pickups. Universal frequency response and sound readability.

3. Nice, simple bridge. Holding the strings through the deck provides a decent sustain.

4. Screening of the tone block, accurate organization of wiring.

Cons (maybe specifically my copy, but on the previous guitar they were similar):

1. Humbuckers stand crooked towards the strings, they are littered. This is due to the fact that there are no springs under the screws. The sensor simply lies on pieces of paralon.

2. Very cheap three-position switch and potentiometers. The volume potentiometer rustles chronically while rotating, without clinging to the deck. The tone potentiometer scratches the deck, both potentiometers need to be changed.

3. The nut of the neck anchor does not stand strictly perpendicular to the frets (at an angle) during rotation by “cutting” the wood. But it seems to work. It seems that there may be problems with the vulture in the future because of this.

Self-tapping screws are inaccurately screwed into the heel of the neck.

Total:

1. The best thing about this guitar is its neck. It is difficult to find an instrument of a similar price category with a similar in quality and tactile feel to the fingerboard.

2. The sound of the guitar is pullable and versatile.

I would like return the guitar, but I don’t think that I can get Tomann’s confessions again. The employees of the export department are great - they make contacts and try to help.

The main complaint is that quality control should be better and more thorough. (especially when sending to CIS countries :-) _)