Harley Benton Fusion-T EMG HT Roasted SBK

Ive been intrigued by Harley Benton guitars for a while, I'm not hugely bothered by the name on the headstock, I'm more interested in how a guitar plays and feels. I had high hopes a Pro Series guitar would live up to the hype but I cant help but feel a little disappointed.

Out of the box it looked amazing, but...

On close inspection there are paint chips in the neck pocket which was very disappointing. They aren't small chips either and should have been noticed at inspection and the guitar then sold as B stock. They aren't a big enough of a problem for me to send the guitar back but they certainly shouldn't be there and it was disappointing to see them on a brand new guitar. At nearly £400 it wasn't cheap, just good value.

The 2nd problem was with the input jack. The jack would not stay in the guitar at all. When inserted it did not engage with a click and would then fall out. I managed to fix this myself by taking the jack plug out and bending the metal to engage with the jack plug correctly. Again if there was any QA by Thomann to test the electronics it should have been picked up and rectified before being sent out.

Another minor issue was with the frets; as many reviews have stated, this guitar comes with very scratchy frets. I expected this problem and after using some fret polishing rubbers on them they felt a lot better and I'm certain they will improve as I play the guitar over the next few months.

Aside from these issues, the guitar feels amazing, the neck feels great, not too thick, not too thin and has a really nice satin feel. It sounds great both clean and overdriven. The

Overall a fairly decent experience but the poor QA really concerns me. As the guitars are cheap anyway it would make sense to raise the prices slightly to then be able to guarantee that any guitar shipped to customers is in good shape. As it stands, whether a guitar you receive needs extra work or not does seem to be a lottery and provided you can fix the basic mistakes and live with imperfections, this guitar is really good value.

Really love the sound of the retro active hot 70s.

The neck is absolutely lovely. The modern C is something I never thought it would like but honestly, it's great.

The body feels a little light compared to the neck so it has a little neck dive. But it's not aggressively neck heavy.

It came almost perfectly in tune shipping all the way from Germany to the UK. Never had that experience before which is crazy.

The only issues I have with apart from the slight neck dive I mentioned earlier were the cosmetic blemishes. But they actually work in a way. However, there are big blobs of glue around the material that covers the pickups but obviously that's more to do with EMG than Harley Benton.

All in all though, I'm really happy with this purchase ☺️

The guitar looks and sounds amazing. And for the price tag it comes with lots of killer features. This has been said many times by others, so why do I only give 3 stars?
1) Quality: my guitar had little scratches near the pickups, glue at the pickups, and a weird stain/pattern on the fretboard (not just the normal wood pattern), but thats cosmetic problems highlighted by others and subject to QC lottery
2) durability: I dont get the point of stainless steel frets when the fretboard itself is so soft that I got dents from my nails on day one. Maybe thats just mine but its not great. Neck is much harder.
3) while I got lucky and had perfectly polished frets, another one I saw had unpolished/barely playable frets (mentioned in reviews already)
4) neck dive, smudge magnet
5) Tone control has nearly no effect half way through (which I never use so I dont care)
So why did I keep it (for now)? Because it plays and sounds like a charm despite all the flaws. Still Thomann clearly missed an opportunity to build a near perfect guitar for everyone and not just for those who are lucky in the QC lottery. Do I still recommend it? Sure, the specs largely compensate for the flaws and Thomann offered a small refund for mine (Great service, thanks!)

well its pretty much what I expected... in my opinion the neck is the most stunning thing about this guitar even though i'm used to playing a thin neck, overall everything feels solid I was a little underwhelmed by the pickups, in distortion mode they are phenomenal but in the cleans the bridge is way too bright and distorted, in the neck pickup, cleans sound bright yet with a deep and rich sound to them...
the build quality was top notch I was kinda worried about that but it turned out great, also the delivery was way quicker than they said which i'm thankful for... the guitar does require some setup to it which is not ideal for beginners and for the people this guitar is targeting despite that i still think its worth the money and the "minuses" it has and there arent many at all.