Review of the Harley Benton Fusion-II HH FR MN FBLB Electric guitar. Where to buy it?

In short: looks great, plays well, sounds good too. Floyd Rose! Packed with outstanding hardware for this price point. I really like it. Most definitely recommended.
I am a beginner to intermediate guitar player ? my main instrument is bass guitar, having started off on double bass in the deep mists of time . . so I am learning a little more each day. Although my band?s guitar player may use this from time to time it is principally, like all my other normal guitars, for personal use. All my other guitars have rosewood or ebony fingerboards – I wanted a guitar with a maple fingerboard to add tonal variety. And it does. Bright and clear allied with lovely sustain from the mahogany body.

Pros: This second generation is so much more attractive than the first of the Fusion Pro series, which to be frank I found ugly. The blue flame top on this is really nice, the matching headstock is the same shade of blue, the blue compliments the maple fretboard perfectly, and all in all it?s a beautiful instrument. So that?s a big tick.
The finish of the guitar is almost faultless cosmetically (the body is three pieces of mahogany, a centre piece and two wings), the masking for the exposed binding is flawless, the stainless steel frets are well finished and inset from the edge of the neck, so there are no sharp edges. There is no fret buzz at all on this example. The intonation was perfect out of the box. The neck itself required no adjustment and has a very nice low friction semi matt finish.
The fretboard itself has a high gloss finish ? looks great and is not horrible thick varnish like I have experienced on some maple strat necks ? it plays very well. The neck joint is absolutely perfect.
The pickups are perfectly OK, I shall keep them for now but a set of Seymour Duncans might well end up in there in the end. The Floyd Rose ? I love the FR locking system. Even if you never use the whammy bar the guitar will stay in tune almost for ever. And if you do use the whammy bar it still does.

Neutral observations: The neck is not particularly thin nor fat, it?s a very definite C shape. Moving to and from the modern neck profile of my Schecter requires a few moments adjustment. The profile is not uncomfortable, just different.
The body is more Jackson Dinky sized, 7/8 at a guess, slightly smaller than my Schecter and Squier strats.
The action was too high for my taste, approximately 5mm on the low E, I dropped it to 3mm, still no fret buzz. The Floyd needed a tiny bit of spring adjustment to get it flat. Grover tuners ? there are Grovers and there are Grovers, not that you need them most of the time anyway.
There were two black screws with washers in the accessory pack, at the time of writing I have no idea what they are for. A tool is provided to adjust the truss rod – the adjuster itself is located at the neck/body join and is very easy to get at if required – mine required no adjustment.

Cons: I am afraid there are a few.
On my guitar there was a cross threaded screw on the locking nut ? the nut itself is thankfully OK and Thomann are sending me a new screw. In the meantime I am using a spare from my own personal collection of random screws. There is a very noticeable drop in volume when switching to coil split. The tones are good and very strat like, but maybe 3- 6db lower in volume than in humbucker mode.
There is one very small routing burr in the neck joint underneath the truss rod adjuster ? but that is something you cannot see unless you are really picky. The volume knob is not on quite straight (not as bad as on my Epiphone Prophesy). The fault that I cannot stop seeing however is that the string tree is at a slight angle to the nut. There is no way of fixing this without ruining the headstock, so I am living with it because the rest of the guitar is more than good enough at this price point. It’s a keeper.

I would like to preface this review by saying that the model I am reviewing is a replacement model. When I ordered this guitar for the first time, it came with a broken bridge pickup. No matter what I did, it would simply not output any sort of sound. The replacement guitar is entirely functional.

The pros:
– Very solid and substantial build quality. The hardware included is incredible for the price point as well.
– It stays in tune remarkably well. After setting up the Floyd Rose and adjusting the action and intonation, I only need to re-tune it every few days or so. Dive-bombs and other acrobatics with the whammy bar don’t throw it off-tune, or at the very least not enough that I would notice while playing.
– The pickups are of expected quality at this price, nothing too great or too bad, but they do sound quite nice.

The cons:
– The fret edges on the upper frets were a bit sharp and noticeable while sliding with my fingers up and down along the neck. Fixed it by sanding them down, but given that they came to me that way, it is definitely a con.

Overall: This guitar is an exceptional model for the price, as are most Harley Benton guitars. It stays in tune, plays well, and it sounds nice. Would recommend.

Additional note: The staff at Thomann were very understanding and kind and addressed my issue with the first ordered guitar quickly and effectively, without issue.