Harley Benton Fusion-III HSH EB FPU

I ordered this guitar the day it was released, and I must say, I wasn't expecting it to be this good of a guitar, and I'm talking about the sound, especially the clean tone, the features and even the bridge.
The sound is exceptional, there's 5 pickup positions, but you can also pull the tone dial and get 5 more tones, making that a total of 10 tones straight out of the factory. The bridge is very straight-forward and easily adjustable, and with the whammy bar it goes about one semitone up and it can slack if you pull it low enough. It stays in tune really well after abusing the tremolo bar and the bar itself feels good to use.

Well, what can I say !!! After nearly 40 years of playing in live acts and buying all the guitars I was told to buy by “The Establishment” , and after buying three kits and building them, a “T” style, a “S” style and a “335” style, teaching myself fret levelling, fret dress and polish and general guitar setup, I decided after watching all the reviews to buy one of these gorgeous looking guitars. So how was it?
The finish and paint job were superb. Playability was not so good, BUT nothing that a couple of hours, easy work couldn’t put right.
Firstly, the action!. The neck needed removing in order to fit shims in the neck pocket, because the bridge saddles were bottomed out on the tremolo base plate and it was impossible to lower the action to suit. Two pieces of cereal box cardboard for the shims, expensive eh? A full fret level, dress and polish followed. ( Only two frets were off level ).Stainless steel polished frets are a dream to play.
The sound! Upon investigation, I found the volume pots were all “B” taper rather than the normal “A” taper for volume and “B” for tone. This was found due to being unable to lower the volume control in order to control overdrive tones. Replacing the volume pots with “A” taper removed this problem.
The Roswell pickups! Comparing these pickups to my PRS SE 2408 simply resulted in adjusting pickup to string height to get the sound the ball park. Not exactly the same, but very good all the same.
The tremolo! Absolutely brilliant. Even on crazy dive bombing the tuning remains usable.
All in all, a seriously good usable gigging workhorse with a great variety of tonal options.

I’ve just read the reviews above and I agree with just about everything that is positive. I bought this as a fun, 3rd guitar after my Fender Tele and Epiphone Casino. I’ll be as brief as I can. I absolutely love this guitar. First though, a coupe of negatives.
1. The colour is much lighter than all of the website images and I’ve notices a few reviewers saying this.
2. The frets (not the fret ends which are lovely) are a little ‘scratchy’ But I reckon that will sort itself out after a couple of weeks playing.

Positives. Too many to list so I’ll try this:
Played great straight out of the box, minimal tuning. Action slightly high for my liking but easily adjustable.
The hardware on this thing is fantastic. Very weighty, smooth, great quality.
The build quality is first rate. Honestly, easily on a parr with my Fender.
It’s a dream to play. Beautifully smooth and slick. This is such a cliche but it feels like something several hundreds of pounds (dollars) worth above this. It’s a joy. And, for me, the biggest thing. It ‘feels’ great to play. I’m an instant Harley Benton convert.

Just one last thing. HB customer service is absolutely first rate but why they use DHL as their courier I’ll never understand. Shocking standards from DHL.