Harley Benton Fusion-T HH HT EB OCT

This was my 12th Harley. Some were returned, some sold and some kept. I already have the strat style OCT which is among my top 5 guitars and one i seem to go back to frequently. Now i got this tele style OCT and it is equally amazing. It looks fantastic, it is very well built, it has the same awesome specs like locking tuners, graphite nut, stainless steel frets, acces to the truss rod by the neck pickup, really nice bridge, great and comfortable carvings and a very nice balace both sitting and standing. The Roswell pickups are actually really ok but will not take your sound to the popular Tele world even though it has split coil possibility by a push-pull pot. But it still sounds really nice even with the no name strings the HB now put on the guitar. I had one Fusion model home with the roasted maple neck, but i prefer this neck any day. The latest batches of the roasted necks looks terrible and my copy had the neck mounted in a wrong angle to the body. With the OCT you get amazing playability and great looks.
If you are out for a guitar and like the tele shape, this is the one to get.I really love everything about it - especially at this ridiculous price.

If you are out for the traditional tele SOUND at least you have to change the electronics or chose another guitar.

Now i have the 2 OCT guitars. Then i am only missing to press PLAY on life again because of this fu..... virus.

This guitar had a lot of fret-buzz when it arrived. A quarter turn of the truss-rod fixed this. The switch has proven to be "scratchy". Contact spray did not fix this. I will have to buy a new one. The G-string goes out of tune. I fixed this by removing the string-trees. Considering the angle of the strings and the nut, I don't understand why they are there in the first place.

Considering that I had to wait more than a week before shipping because they "needed to set it up first", that was a bit bizarre.

Apart from that, I think this is my best guitar to date. I have started using this guitar for almost everything.

The neck pickup is extremely clean! No need to buy a Jazz Guitar.

I will be buying one more for backup.

The guitar looks and feels great. I stumbled upon this guitar on youtube and immediately fell in love. It's what I was looking for: tele shaped guitar with alternative design decisions (mahogany body, simple 6 saddle fixed bridge, and the last but not the least - humbuckers). Gotta love stailess steel frets, Graptech TUSQ XL nut, ebony fingerboard and locking tuners.
I love the Tele I have but I wanted something more versatile and lighter (the ash body on my tele is as heavy as cast iron). I initially wanted a black one but they quickly went of stock and I ordered a sparkled green one while they lasted.
The quality of manufacturing is excellent, I haven't found any flaws or imperfections, so no complains whatsoever on that side. The color in reality is very eye pleasing and not too "poppy", which I was kind of apprehensive of. Wood "binding" looks neat too.
The neck with natural satin finish is very pleasant to touch and move hand around, the grip is very comfortable.
The hardware looks and feels solid. The volume knob makes some sound when turning like it's rubbing something but I can live with that.
I slightly more prefer regular size frets on my Tele to jumbo frets here but it's a matter of getting used to the instrument.
The guitar came well intonated with action a bit higher than I am used to but the adjustment took just a few minutes.
Speaking about tone, I'd say that I expected slightly thicker and darker tone from the Rosewell humbuckers after all youtube reviews I saw but not a big issue, it can be compensated later in the sound chain for the most part.
I didn't closely inspected the electronics, they work fine, no humming, buzzing or knobs screeching, so why bother.
All in all, it's my daily "go to" instrument now (I've got 4 guitars including this one).
The only cons I noticed by now is that it has a tendency to a very slight neck dive. The other minor nuisance is the positioning of the 3 way pickup selector. It's too close to the strings and I often bump into it with my hand. But these I can live with easily given all the joy it is to play. Anyways, I do it mostly at home now.
So, it's my first Harley Benton and most likely not the last one :).
BTW, the delivery was quite fast (I was afraid that there would be issues given the situation with the pandemic now). The only thing that I was looking for in the box but it was missing was the sticker "Rescue my guitars first". No big deal.
Keep good work up Thomann!
Thanks!