Harley Benton Fusion-III HH Roasted SSP

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Electric Guitar

  • Ergonomically shaped body: Nyatoh
  • Bolt-on neck: roasted maple
  • Fingerboard: roasted maple
  • Fingerboard inlays: Black Dot
  • Natural wood binding
  • Neck profile: Modern C
  • Scale: 648 mm
  • Fingerboard radius: 305 mm
  • Nut width: 42 mm
  • Nu-Bone nut
  • 22 Medium Jumbo Blacksmith stainless steel frets
  • Pickups: Roswell LAF-B-GD AlNiCo-5 (bridge) and Roswell LAF-N-GD AlNiCo-5 (neck) humbuckers
  • 3-Way switch
  • Control: Master Volume
  • Master tone control with push/pull function
  • Wilkinson 50II 2-point tremolo
  • Nickel satin hardware
  • HB JN-07 staggered locking tuners
  • Single roller string retainers
  • Factory strings: .010 - .046
  • Colour: Gloss Silver Sparkle
Available since July 2021
Item number 521283
Sales Unit 1 piece(s)
Colour Silver
Body Nyatoh
Top None
Neck Roasted Maple
Fretboard Roasted Maple
Frets 22
Scale 648 mm
Pickups HH
Tremolo Wilkinson
incl. Bag No
incl. Case No
1.329 AED 335,29 €
Plus 277 AED shipping
The price in AED is a guideline price only
Since we ship from Germany, additional costs through taxes and customs may be incurred
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This product is in stock and can be shipped immediately.

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Decorative all-rounder

With this elegant guitar equipped with two humbuckers, you will be prepared for any scenario. The ergonomically designed body made of mahogany-like nyatoh wood with its striking "Gloss Silver Sparkle" top finish is bolted to the roasted neck in a truly traditional way. The neck and fingerboard with a 305mm radius is also made of roasted flamed maple, ensuring a snappy sound. To sum it up, tasteful looks, high flexibility, and tried-and-tested branded hardware and electronics come together here to create an affordable instrument that is suitable for a variety of genres.

Diversity and aesthetics

The Fusion-III HH Roasted SSP model is a real eye-catcher. The nyatoh body features an eye-catching "Gloss Silver Sparkle" top finish that is sure to get people's attention. The neck is made from roasted Canadian flamed maple and secured to the body with a four-screw neck joint. This instrument is very comfortable to play thanks to its nut width of 42mm and its modern C neck profile. The roasted maple fingerboard is also more than just an off-the-rack product. Furthermore, 22 wear-free stainless steel frets, a Nu-Bone nut, a Wilkinson 50IIK two-point vibrato, and locking machine heads are used here. The electronics comprise two AlNiCo-5 humbuckers, made by Roswell. These are complemented by a three-position switch, as well as potentiometers for volume and tone. The latter allows the humbuckers to be split via a push-pull function, thus also making single-coil sounds possible. The jack socket is ergonomically recessed into the side of the body.

Sounds to suit any style

The Fusion-III HH Roasted SSP is extremely flexible in terms of sound thanks to its two pickups, a three-way selector switch, and the option of splitting the humbuckers. AlNiCo magnets also provide a vintage-style touch to the sound - from Blues to Hard Rock and Pop to Funk. Depending on the particular song and song part, you can vary the timbre and the degree of distortion. Locking machines heads ensure reliable tuning, while the stainless steel frets are characterised by minimal wear - so the instrument will last for many years. With a scale length of 648mm, 22 jumbo frets, and a comfortable C profile for the neck, this guitar relies on a tried and tested design. In combination with the contoured body with its double cutaway, excellent playability is a given.

About Harley Benton

Since 1998, the Harley Benton brand has been catering for the needs of numerous guitarists and bassists. In addition to an extensive range of stringed instruments, Thomann's house brand also offers a wide choice of amplifiers, speakers, effect pedals, and other accessories. In total, the range includes over 1,500 products. Built by established names in the industry, all Harley Benton products combine quality and reliability at attractive and affordable prices. The continuous expansion of the range ensures that Harley Benton always provides new, exciting, and innovative products that keep players perfectly in tune with the musical world, day after day.

One guitar for the whole live set

The Fusion-III HH Roasted SSP is well-prepared for any situation. The Wilkinson 50II two-point vibrato system offers a familiar flat profile, and the classic but also striking looks further ehnance the visual appeal of this special instrument. The straightforward combination of two splittable humbuckers allows for an extremely high level of sonic flexibility, so that changing your instrument for the sake of sound during the show should be unnecessary. Such a stylish guitar is particularly nice to have live on stage.

In the spotlight

38 Customer ratings

4.7 / 5

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33 Reviews

d
Silver beauty
dionys_knijnik 17.09.2021
Ordered this one a few days after Fusion III series was announced, so there were no reviews
TL;DR: it's a great guitar! Especially for its price

Now let's dig into details

PROS:
- Look. Visually it is amazing, WAY more beautiful in real life compared to photos. Sparks and shines like fireworks, so gorgeous
- Also, top finish does not collect fingerprints or dust
- Spec list. You get roasted maple neck, steel frets, coils split, two point trem, truss rod adjustment wheel at the last fret, locking tuners, nubone nut and that top finish - so many features - for only 400 eur. You heard me
- Roasted maple neck feels fantastic. Smooth, convenient, nice profile, satin feel. Also - do I need to say this - it's beautiful
- Frets aligned well, fret ends are nice, but they are not smooth out of the box. I've polished them and they are soooo good now
- Really like matte finish on trem, pickups and furniture. Feels nice too
- Pickups are great, coil split sounds great, maybe they have slightly low output, but I really love their tone, both clean and distorted
- Tuners are fine, no problems with them so far. Nice to have locking mechanism - works great, very convenient
- Trem is fine (except one problem - read the cons), works great, set it up in a floating position, holds tuning perfectly, no matter how wild your divebombs are


CONS:
- Trem was the main problem. When I initially set it up, it worked really weird. It got stuck in random positions when you use it. It absolutely didnt want to return in its balance point, it didnt flutter and I could not control it at all. It took me some time to figure out the problem. Basically, the size of the cavity for tremolo in guitar body did not match the size of tremolo (if it makes sense), so inner part of the tremolo rubbed the wall of this cavity. My guitar tech have slightly increased this cavity (tenths or hundredths of a millimeter) and problem disappeared. It was tricky to find out the problem, but now i have no questions to tremolo, it works as intended
- Pickup switch made some strange sounds while switching, but one spray of oil contact cleaner took that away
- If you want frets smooth out of the box - you need to polish them
- Have some question to retainers, not sure if they work well, hear weird noises while tuning


Neutral thoughts:
- Out of the box it needs tuning and adjustments (as every other new instrument) - action, truss rod, trem, frets etc. You should keep it in mind. Strongly recommend going to your guitar tech
- Change strings immediately - stock ones are not good (old and rusty)
- Took one trem spring away - think with 10/46 strings 3 springs are too much. With two trem works great, no problems
- Tone push/pull is too loose - common problem with push/pulls, but sometimes when you use coil split, your tone knob turns around, prefer more tight pots
- Volume pot is very close to the bridge, it is hard sometimes to change volume when you use whammy bar
- You should know that almost everything is inherited from Fusion II series, these two versions are basically the same guitar. Not sure if it bothers anyone (not me)

All being said, I absolutely LOVE this guitar. After fixing this annoying bridge problem guitar feels nice, plays nice, sounds nice, looks fantastic. Everything is just so good, when you pick it up you just want to play it and do not let go at all. Love this guitar
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LA
Pleasantly Surpised
L. Axe 29.10.2022
This is my first review of any product I've ever owned. I purchased a Fusion III SSP about 2 months ago. I was expecting to have a decent guitar that would probably need a setup (as most guitars do from the factory) and have an adjustment period before getting comfortable with it. How wrong I was!

I gave the guitar a few days to adjust to my climate. The guitar needed to be tuned, it came a few strings a half-step down. Once tuned I check the nut, intonation and string height. The nut was cut to perfection. There was no snagging or binding. The intonation was spot on. String height was a nice 4mm from the 12th fret. The neck didn't need a truss rod adjustment. Speaking of the neck, I've never played a smoother neck in all my years of playing. There were no fret ends poking out or sharp edges. The Flame on the back of the neck has nice variations of large and small flame patterns. The fret-board has a more nuanced flame that appears in certain lighting.

The Sparkle finish is quiet something to see in person. I've seen other sparkle finishes but they usually have small flakes and this Fusion has large flakes which for me is more pleasing. The finish reflects light in a similar way to disco balls or a fine Christmas tree topper. I like the wood binding as a transition from the sparkle to the natural transparent finish. I don't think a cream, white or pearloid binding would have looked appropriate.

The pickups are good if a bit dark for my taste. I adapt to this by adding some mids and top end. They are not muddy. They have good clarity and note definition, especially so when coil split. They do a good job at being able to get those strat like tones. They excel at being able to crank the gain to get a vintage rock/metal tone.

The Wilkinson bridge is rock solid with moderate trem use. As I don't "dive bomb" the guitar stays in tune and remains stable. This guitar is my first with locking tuners and I will never use standard tuners again. I did have to change the strings as I tried too hard to be Malmsteen and broke a high E. I've never had a easier time changing strings.

Honestly I'm probably forgetting to mention a few things, but overall I've been impressed with how good the Fusion is. Since getting it I've played more in roughly the last 2 months than I have in the previous 8 months. The Fusion has in a way inspired me and reminded me of why I love playing guitar. For me it's that good of an instrument.
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C
Amazing guitar and quality
Cjallarie 14.12.2021
Coming from only playing high end PRS, Suhr and Parkers Most my life I figured it was time to try something different that didn’t break the bank. Been watching this brand for a couple years and finally decided to pull the trigger on one after some research. Guitar showed up pretty much flawless minus some frets that were a bit rough. Nothing major.
Was set up decent and the intonation was bang on. Neck is unreal and the flame is as nice or nicer than some of the suhr and Ernie ball guitars I’ve had. No high frets, no fret sprout, no sharp edges and a Nicely rolled finger board.
The guitar is a pleasure to play. Stays in tune without perfectly.
I’m not saying this is on par with my $5k guitars. But for 1/10 the price I’d put it up there with some of the $1500-$2000 guitars I’ve had.
The pick ups are just ok but totally usable. A little darker and smooth sounding than I’d like but that’s what eq is for.
Hardware is as good as any American Strat and maybe better considering this has roller trees and locking tuners with good ratio at 18/1
Tusq nut and stainless frets on a flame roasted neck and board is unheard of at this price.
Anyways I like it so much I just ordered the tele version.
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RS
Would be great regardless, but price makes it an absolute must buy.
Rob Say 29.11.2022
The guitar arrived very well packaged, and in perfect condition. No dents, nicks or scratches. Good start.

The feature set on this guitar is top shelf. Roasted maple neck, stainless steel frets, locking tuners, Wilkinson trem, nu-bone nut and roller style string trees. The only other instruments I could find with that same list of features cost over £1,000 each, and let’s not forget that until 2 or 3 years ago roasted maple was something reserved for custom shop or limited edition runs from the big brands.

The guitar plays really well. Very comfortable neck with a fretboard radius that is perfect for my preference - I don’t like anything too flat and thin. The satin finish makes the neck very smooth, no sticky hand issues which are common with high gloss necks. The fretboard edges are nicely rounded - no sharp edges or rough fret ends that I have found. There are some minor tooling marks on the fretboard edge, but they absolutely do not detract from the look or feel - you have to put your nose on the thing to see them.

The sound of the guitar is straight up 80’s hot rodded strat territory. The bolt on maple neck and fretboard makes for some very satisfying snap to the high end with plenty of midrange warmth. Bass response is a little light, so I wouldn’t recommend using this guitar for modern metal - but look at it, that’s clearly not what this guitar was made to do.

The pickups are the only area of the guitar where I have any complaint and it is a minor (ish) gripe which is that they are very inconsistent across the range of the volume pot. Rolling off the volume even a little completely loses the punch of the pickup, along with a lot of the high end and while using the coil split mode it makes the pickups almost inaudible by comparison to the full humbucker mode. Leave the volume and tone at 10 and shred away, but I will almost certainly replace these pickups down the road. They look nice in brushed metal though.

In terms of setup, the guitar comes in a very ‘raw’ out of box state. There is dust left over from manufacturing visible around the frets, neck joint and around the trem cavity and the guitar required some adjustment before performing to it’s potential. For me this meant putting 1 1/2 turns on the truss rod, lowering the bridge by a turn on both sides, tightening the locking tuners and adjusting the bridge saddles for the D,G and B strings to nail the intonation. If you have any experience maintaining or setting up guitars this is easy to do and took me about 10 minutes, plus another 10 minutes for a clean and polish. I don’t count any of this against the instrument BUT beginners may not be able to get the best out of this guitar without a trip to their local guitar shop to get it setup properly.

Finally then, there is the price and I guess that this is where the story comes together. For £349 (and free shipping!!) I got a great looking instrument which plays just as well as my Epiphone and PRS SE instruments both of which cost twice as much and has a list of features that neither of those guitars come close to. This guitar sounds awesome (bearing in mind shortcomings of the Roswell pickups) but this is easily solved with some light soldering and a set of Seymour Duncans one day in the future.

All in all, this would be a good guitar for £800. A great guitar for £500. For £349 it raises the bar for every other manufacturer still selling ‘Professional’ instruments with plastic nuts and generic trem systems (*cough* Fender and Gibson *cough*).

Buy one. With experience and a little TLC this thing is an incomparable value.
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