Harley Benton Fusion-T HH EB BK

I want to preface this review by noting that one of the highlighting features that convinced me to purchase this instrument was because the fretboard wood was listed as Macassar Ebony, which is known for its beautiful mix of dark and medium colors. It's one of the more expensive types of woods with respect to fretboard choice, particularly because of the aesthetic. Which brings me to the problem... They just stained the whole fretboard super dark!! I can tell because on the neck (where the fretboard is glued to the shaft) there's a clear discoloration between this area and the top of the fretboard. This was a major disappointment to me and it irritates me because I do not recall seeing this mentioned on the listing. This alone makes me reduce the score of the rating.

Aside from this, the quality of the instrument is rather impressive for the price. There's only 1 tall fret and it plays super smooth. The neck is a matte finish, but I found some thin dark-colored gunk stuck to the neck near the joint. I think it can just be rubbed off, but it's still worth mentioning. The maple neck is beautiful, I can see multiple locations on it where there is birdseye, which is an unexpected surprise. The pickups are hot and sound awesome. The fretwork is fantastic (with the exception of that one high fret) though the material feels like a stainless steel composite. The fretboard side dots are slightly lower than they're supposed to be, but this is not an issue. See my other review on the Fusion 2 for specific details regarding quality of these instruments, this one is almost identical.

Aesthetically, this is one of the nicest looking modern guitars I've ever found, and it holds up in person. The neck is very comfortable, the locking tuners work well, and the wilkinson trem is great. For the price, you really can't do any better. The pickup selector has also been moved in the version I got, now it is placed facing towards the pickups as opposed to being parallel to them like in the photos. I prefer this direction, but the selector is still a bit too close to the volume knob.

My only serious criticism is that a few of the upper frets on the guitar have some major knicks in them, which make bending unpleasant. I'm thinking that can be fixed with some polishing though. Overall, I'm happy with this purchase.

Unrelated to the guitar, there was a delay in Thomann sending it for some reason, though I was never told what the cause was. Not a huge deal, but more communication would have been nice considering how expensive shipping is.