HB Fusion T HH HT EB - On the Bench Today

I was perusing the Harley Benton catalog over the holidays and came upon this Telecaster or T type guitar. When I started to read the specifications, I became really intrigued.

The guitar comes with an ebony fretboard, stainless frets, and a Graph Tech TUSQ XL nut. That is f’ing wild for a guitar in the sub $300 price point. That is wild for a guitar in the $800 price point – something Yamaha has done with the Revstar standard.

Looking at the overall aesthetics of the guitar - the guitar is just very pretty. The color of the body and how they have done the combination of the contouring and staining of the back of the body coupled with the headstock being the same color as the body is pretty cool for any guitar.

Here are some of the specifications for the guitar:

Body is made of Nyatoh
With a bolt-on Canadian maple neck with an Ebony fingerboard, matching headstock

• Neck profile: Modern C
• Fingerboard radius: 12 Inch
• Scale: 25.5
• Nut width: 42 mm
• Graph Tech TUSQ XL nut
• 22 Medium Jumbo Blacksmith stainless steel frets

• Pickups: Roswell LAF-B-CR Alnico-5 (bridge) and Roswell LAF-N-CR Alnico-5 (neck) humbuckers
• Control: Master Volume with a Master tone control with push/pull function for single-coil/humbuckers
• 3-Way switch
• WSC HPS-6 Custom hardtail bridge (hipshot copy)
• Chrome hardware
• Staggered WSC locking die-cast machine heads (hipshot copies)


$238

Observations

The guitar weighs in at 7 lbs and 2 oz.

The tuners and bridge are actually pretty good although inexpensive Chinese copies of the Hip Shot branded items.

The truss rod adjustment is at the base of the neck where it meets the body, and the guitar comes with a handy tool to easily adjust the neck without having to remove it to gain access.

The frets are smooth on the edges, there is not any fret rock on the guitar and out of the box the intonation was set properly.

The fit and finish of the guitar is okay. I found some imperfections near the neck.

The back of the neck is satin and feels good in the hand to play.

The guitar sounds excellent both unplugged and plugged into an amp.

The pickups are great sounding, and I am not inclined to want to upgrade them.

I do not find the single coil mode of much use except for the bridge pickup. The neck and middle positions are anemic and weak sounding.

Humbucker mode does not sound like a telecaster but sounds great for a general 2 humbucker electric guitar.

What amazes me is this is the first guitar I have seen from Harley Benton that I would not modify anything.