This Guitar Disappointed Me... Then IMPRESSED Me! - Harley Benton Fusion III Review
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- Опубліковано 6 лип 2024
- Thanks for watching this video! Hope you enjoyed it. Please note that I specifically bought a B-stock unit - I have no idea if my issues are congruent with normal units. Overall, if you're willing to do some minor work, this might be one of the most feature-rich yet simple and comfortable guitars out there, especially for the price!
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:06 - Unboxing
3:22 - The specs
5:30 - The review
9:43 - Bad stuff
24:17 - Sound demo
26:31 - Closing thoughts and overall review
27:36 - Outro
All is well that ends well! Gorgeous performance. So muisical! 🙂
Thanks dude! 😄
B-stocks are returns. Due to Thomann's free return policy withing the EU, people can order several models, choose at home what to keep and return the rest, so they do. A B-stock is most of the time nothing but an A-stock with fingerprints.
Interesting. So the not-so-good fretwork and malfunctioning pickup are likely factory actual issues rather than just something that would come on a B-stock guitar, since it’s basically just a lightly used guitar.
@@PulsarGlitchMusic The fretwork could have been a return reason. After all, it is something someone notices easily and I see it as a common criticism in other reviews. But if the pick-up was working fine on the first day, then that played no role. I think that pick-up might be good, by the way. It could have been just a bad soldering joint.
Gotcha! Yeah, it could have been something like a solder joint, but in any case it’s all working properly. I’ll keep the old pickup around just in case.
@@PulsarGlitchMusic
All Benton guitars I have and all I've tried had these really scratchy fretwires.
And all the B-stock ones had other issues than just the 'slight wear' they advertise, I guess most people return them because of that and Thomann just sends 'em on, you don't even have to state any reasons for the return nowadays, so they really don't care, that's quite sad.
Harley Benton Fusion Series is a pretty decent guitar out of the box. The best thing about the guitar is the roasted maple neck and SS frets and truss rod design. I replaced the pickups on my fusion 2 guitar and replaced the 5 way switch and wiring. I cut the nut since it was too high and added a three string, string tree from Reverend that fixes the string buzzing I was experiencing. I polished the frets and now it is a very good guitar! PS: I paid more for my WCR custom pickups than I did for the guitar!
Excellent level headed review!
I have a fusion iii silver sparkle HH. Almost two years in and I love it!
Thanks! I like that they do all the different pickup configurations available for the Fusions.
@@PulsarGlitchMusic I subscribed to this channel because of this review. When I have time I'll check other reviews. I'm currently trying to find a traditional strat sounding guitar but from other reviews I'm not sure about the American vintage ii 61. And I do prefere a good value.
The purpose of using stainless steel frets doesn’t mean they are by nature smooth and polished, stainless steel is used because it doesn’t wear out like nickel, so you should never need to replace the frets. If HB had their workers polish and finish the frets like for example Suhr do with their guitars it would add substantial cost to their guitars. If you play it for a few hours you won’t even need to polish the stainless steel or use fret erasers.
I discussed this in another comment reply - I’m aware that stainless frets aren’t naturally smooth, but one would expect the manufacturer to do a good fret job when using such a high-end feature like that. There are other HB guitars around the same price that have beautifully polished stainless frets. Also, I think if you had felt just how scratchy these frets were, you would change your mind and agree that they definitely needed a good polish, it was not something that could have been broken in by any amount of playing.
@@PulsarGlitchMusic Scratchy frets is a thing, kiddo.. Just play the guitar and it polishes em out.
Usually that’s the case with nickel frets, but stainless frets take significantly longer to polish out with normal playing, and these frets were VERY scratchy (they were basically the surface texture of sand). My complaint was that they should have been polished out of the factory, and even polishing them myself took much longer than it should have.
@@PulsarGlitchMusic These people are ridiculous. Imperfect HB frets are acceptable, but terribly scratchy frets are just not acceptable. They probably just didn't put any time at all into polishing them. That said, whenever I get a new guitar I take the felt Dremel bit to the frets, using auto metal polish. If it's SS, you're probably set for life at that point. Well worth the 40 minutes or so polishing the hell out of that steel. Btw, what an amazingly beautiful neck on that.
@@guyincognito320 my thoughts exactly!
I just bought the exact same guitar, but not b stock, and I have found no issues so far. I love the sound, and the action and the pickup flexibility. I find the bridge pickup as single coil allows me to get a really close Fender 60's sound, and the humbuckers lots of drive for 70's distortion drive. Very pleased with my purchase, and at the price I paid, unbelievable.
Awesome review and (even though I am not fan of Metal/high gain music) very nice playing. I have HSS Fusion III and I love it and have similar experience as you have. I can confirm that my frets were also scratchy. And oddly, on a SC-550 Deluxe (another Harley Benton guitar I have), frets are like a glass, really great. Anyways, keep up the good work!
Thanks for the kind words! And yeah, I've heard their LP and SG clones are excellent, I might have to try one out sometime.
Both the HB's I have with stainless steel frets needed a good polish job as they were both very scratchy, I have a fusion pro II and a Dullahan 😌
For frets, mineral oil and play it. Mine are butter smooth now.
Hey that was a nice video! Seems you were genuinely excited, which is always more fun to see than UA-cam acting.
Do you know if these Fusions have dual action truss rods? I'm looking for a secondary guitar for C tuning since I play 7 strings, but as you said, Fusions and Amaroks have quite the chunky necks, the Amarok even more so despite being the metal choice with 5 piece neck for more stability, so my goblin hands would prefer the slightly smaller Fusion 3 (the one with reverse headstock and Emg though). Not sure if the Fusion necks are made for downtunings though, so a dual action truss rod would at least make the neck adjustment easier for such usages
Thank you! Almost certain it has a dual-action truss rod, I have no problem tuning down to drop-C. I tend to use lighter strings just for the feel but I’m sure you could go heavier on this guitar.
That guitar looks wicked! I wanna get one. Very insightful! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! After doing all the (luckily) relatively easy work it needed, it rips! A fantastic buy if you aren’t afraid to do a little work to make it perfect.
@@PulsarGlitchMusic I dig it! I’m down with it. I’ve been thinking about it and now I think I’m going to get one 😎🤘🏼
Were the frets pretty level as is with no dead spots/buzzing?
They were all great on my unit, nothing I had to fix.
The quality of song's mixing & mastering one of the best I've heard so far man. I bealive people would listen for hours if you share a mix/mastering videos for guitarists. I'm also using neural dsp plugings and never thought output would be that delicious. Please have one.
Wow, thank you! That means a lot, I really appreciate it. I’ll definitely consider doing a guitar mixing video, haven’t thought about that! 😄
The frets on mine sorted themselves out after a couple of weeks of light playing. I like this guitar. I have 4 other Harley Bentons.
The bridge soind demo for a bit reminded for a bit of demon of fall opeth melody line. Great playing. Do you recommend buying a A stock version of this or one with floyd rose. I like to play a lot pantera stuff. So i wanna learn dive bombing etc. waiting for your response 🔥
I think either A or B stock is just fine, you just gotta be willing to do some work to the guitar before it’s ready to play. Thanks!
I have used several HB guitars this year, all with stainless steel frets: 2 Amaroks were fine (but had misplaced bridges), Fusion Firemist was much more scratchy. Also, I had an LTD with stainless steel frets and they were buttery smooth, shiny like a mirror right from the box. I had different problems with HBs, all A-stock. The one you've got as B-stock could be A-stock as well, it's just a matter of luck. And Fusions are prone to cracks between neck and neck pickups cavity, have seen quite a few with different severity, new A-stock ones. It's all because with such price/components ratio, the QC are... you, basically :)
I also ordered 2 A-stock Ibanezes from Thomann, one arrived scratched and with broken electronics, also broken pickup screw and destroyed other pickup screws heads, then another Ibanez had broken strap pin and and was also scratched (looked like a return after heavy use). So, I have really 0 idea how they treat new intruments/returns, maybe sometimes randomly xD
The best thing is a guaranteed return within 30 days. Which can really lead to these problems. Somebody can order new guitar, use it for a month, gig with it :D, then return.
yea i got the gloss pink HSS version and the frets were really scratchy, I don't really mind though since after at least a few hours of playing they wear in anyway. i did have to lower the action a fair amount which was no big deal. otherwise, great guitar especially for the price. yours looks like it has more flame in the roasted maple which I'm a little jealous of but oh well!
Yeah, after a quick setup and fret job I think it’s a great guitar for the price! Very impressed.
I own a dozen of Harley Benton guitars now, most of them have been ranging from more than serviceable to awesome with only one having been a bit of a lemon and that lemon was fine after re-cutting the nut, correcting the relief, setting the string height and intonation and putting some locking tuners on it -- Not complaining even, considering the thing was cheaper than the regular locking tuners I usually buy to upgrade a guitar with.
As far as the unpolished SS frets go, those have varied from model to model for me personally. Not a big deal to be honest I always do my own set up after receiving to adjust it to my liking -- most of these are very playable out of the box though. For stainless steel frets I use 0000 grade steel wool to polish, which yields a glass like result as well. The only downside to using that as your polishing agent is that you HAVE TO either remove the pickups or cover them perfectly to prevent steel wool dust accumulating on the pickups.
With regards to the pickup being broken, you are right no manufacturer or reseller can be reasonably blamed for that. Guitars below the few thousand dollar price range do not test longer than half an hour before it leaves QA. That's simply not economically viable. What really matters is how Thomann dealt with the issue and from what I can gather they did not only the bare minimum of just replacing the broken part but also reimbursing you for the work needed to replace said part.
ps. B-stock does not necessarily mean returned customer owned products by definition. They could be items that did not meet the quality standard during Thomann' own QA process.
Thomann does not have any QC process. If you buy anything that is new, don´t you just expect it to function right out of the box? I know that I do. And the same thing goes for this company. If they sell their product for a under price, it is their problem. It should not be up to the customer to finish of the work that should have been done at the factory (polishing frets, cutting nuts and so forth). All these things should have been done at the factory PRIOR to shipping. So why should we as customers accept poor craftmanship just because the price is low? We should not!
I bought this very guitar and it was a peice of shit! Why? Because it would not stay in tune if you bend the B or G string. You have to whammy the damn thing to get it back in to tune. But I don`t use the tremolo after every time I have bent a note, nore do I expect it to be a must to do so to be able to play the damn thing. Tohmann sent me two of these shit guitars and none of them could hold their tuning after bending strings. And that means that as an musical instrument, this guitar is a peice of crap. And I will never ever buy any Harley Benton guitar again. EVER!😡😡
And I also wonder how so many UA-camrs can give this POS so raving reviews when it clearly is a POS.🤮
hey, could you perhaps leave a link to those fret erasers? 🤝
Just updated the description with a link. 😄
That sound demo was cool as shit!
Thanks a ton! 🤘😄 It’s my song “Origins”, available wherever you stream or buy music. That’s one of my favorite riffs to play, so fun and groovy.
What size are the frets? All shred guitars should be Jumbo and Xtra Jumbo.
According to HB they’re medium jumbo frets.
Probably for a much better price, you can buy grinding wheel sticks. Those work really well for a finish polish. Well used green weenie pads work the best. You don't have to pay these "ripoff" artists a lot of money. Just be creative while you keep your end goal in mind.
I still don't t understand the kerfuffle about the pickups. They sound pretty great. I wouldn't think of changing them, especially having seen the prices of new pickups.
The problem was that the original bridge pickup didn’t work. I kinda had to change it to play the guitar 😅
@@PulsarGlitchMusic Well, apart from the pickup not functioning. 🙂
At this point I've seen a lot of Fusion III videos. A lot of them talk about changing pickups. A few that actually did. The recorded sound didn't change that much.
I have an Fusion III HSH on the way. I can't wait to try it. 🙂
Nice! Hope you enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed mine. Yeah, I actually quite liked the pickups once I got working ones. Even though I play metal, I generally like medium output humbuckers (~8-12k) because they clean up nicely, and I love these for that reason. Pickup swaps generally only make a big difference in clean tones anyway, high gain sounds will be nearly identical between them.
KD ordered a Harley Benton which had heavily microphonic pickups (you could hear his voice as he spoke into them), they also picked up the sound as he moved his hand up and down the back of the neck and body - but according to Thoman’s experts as both pickups did this it was ‘how it’s supposed to be’!
It got returned for a refund which saddened him because it would be returned to stock and then shipped to someone else because according to their ‘experts’ it was ‘How it’s supposed to be’!
@@TwoBassedI saw that video and I gotta say it was disappointing to see, but I had a much better experience with their support and my issue was resolved quickly. The pickups in mine are not microphonic at all and sound fantastic.
Does B stock come like that?
I have heard some say that their B-stock guitars were like-new, and some have said theirs were like mine and needed lots of work.
How much did it cost?
The guitar was $295, and the shipping was $78.
Those roswell pickups are not the best you can have to my tastes... But everybody is free to like what they want to like😊
Random thought... You wouldnt be a fan of early Opeth would you?
Actually haven’t listened to a whole lot of Opeth, I should give them a listen! I do listen to a lot of Gojira, Mastodon, and Karnivool though.
@@PulsarGlitchMusic well. Its just that (for me) your sound demo sounded very early/mid 2001-2005 Opethy. If not then never mind.
their pre-2001 is more black metal influenced and people will like that early period but 2001-2005 is really when they made a big name for themselves.
A lot of masterpieces were written!
They dont really do the prog-metal game anymore but they are getting better at doing their prog-rock stuff.
Im sure you will love their earlier material as much as i do 😅😅
Nice man, that sounds awesome, I’ll give it a listen!
Stainless steel does not mean it is polished. Don’t jump to conclusions what definition of stainless steel says that what physical property indicates that. I have SS pot and it isn’t polished in fact it’s kind of dull. Polish is not a characteristic of the metal it is a process done to the metal. It’s like a car the body doesn’t inherently come polished or waxed those are process you do to the material.
I understand that - what I meant was that generally when a guitar is high-end enough to include stainless steel frets, it also tends to have a good fret job. Usually the rough fret jobs tend to accompany nickel frets since they’re usually found on much lower-end guitars.
@@PulsarGlitchMusic I agree but this is a budget Guitar with high end features.
Indeed it is, but I’ve bought EART guitars below the price of this guitar and the stainless steel frets were flawless on both guitars, so my standards were set pretty high already.
I beg to differ there is a reasonable expectation of frets being dressed coming out of the factory -- how well or poorly that may have been done is another issue altogether. With your rationale however stainless steel frets are just that. For them to be crowned you need to purchase a guitar with crowned stainless steel frets. No guitar manufacturer in the world markets their guitars like that.
I wonder if the frets are actually stainless steel or there is some marketing BS going on and they are using some crappy alloy with stainless steel in it but it's not fully stainless?
They’re definitely stainless - I did go through and polish them up and it took *forever*, haha. Nickel frets take seconds to polish, stainless not so much.
Have you ever seen any "real" professional band playing an HB on stage? If Not, why?
Haven’t noticed anyone specifically playing one, but I bet it’s because the brand just isn’t well-known enough, not because of any fault of the guitars! Some guitarists like Josh Homme are known for using more midrange and entry-level guitars because they know there are some real inexpensive gems out there.
👍222
Never ever buy a b-stock instrument, for about 40 dollars more you buy a beast of a guitar!
According to the other comments here from people who have gotten the same model but brand new, they had the same issues with new guitars, so I would argue B-stock is still the way to go as long as you don’t mind minor cosmetic flaws.
I bought a B-stock HH pickup configuration Fusion 3 earlier this year, it was in perfect condition. They are fantastic guitars at amazing prices.
Their attention to detail at quality is pretty awful. I have 3 HBs and sent them all back
It’s a mixed bag for me. Some are absolutely flawless and some need lots of work. Just up to luck, I suppose.
Guitars of very poor quality and that cannot be played. €400 in the trash only serves for decoration. If you want a good and cheap guitar Yamaha is betterIf you want a good and cheap guitar
That has been the opposite of my experience (see sound demo for proof). For me, the guitar had great bones and only some minor issues that were easy to fix. And I have played many Squier, Ibanez GIO and lower-cost RG, EART, Harley Benton, and other guitars that were sub-$400 and played beautifully. I have even played some Harley Bentons that were around $150 and played better than many guitars 3x the price. I will agree, though, that Yamaha is also fantastic. Just have to do some searching and experimenting.
@@PulsarGlitchMusic You may be right, but then my 400€ guitar It would be better than other €800 or €1200 guitars. I don't think it's a reality. You think so?
It depends on the guitar. There are some $400 guitars that feel like garbage, and there are some that feel better than a $1200 guitar. There’s no rule about what price is best - it depends on the built quality and feel of the individual instrument.
@@PulsarGlitchMusic You can't compare a €400 Harley Benton with a €1,200 Ibanez, Yamaha or Fender. Neither the construction nor the electronics nor the sound has anything to do with it.
I would urge you to try one yourself, you may be surprised. There are some elements like the finish that will never be replicated in an inexpensive instrument because it’s so costly to make a proper finish, but others like the build quality are surprisingly similar.
terrible demonstration….the sounds always corrupted by effects….what are the sounds of the pick ups? I'll go look for more tutorials
The only thing between this guitar and your headphones for the demonstration was a Neural DSP amp on the rhythm guitar and occasionally some reverb on the lead guitar. I demonstrated an electric guitar through an amp because that is what you do with an electric guitar.