Harley Benton Fusion-T HH HT EB OCT

I was lucky enough to grab one of these before they sold out but mine is going back to Thomann. I just couldn't live with it.

Firstly, the construction and components on this guitar are really very good. It's easily the best HB guitar I've played or seen. It is one of the few HBs that have cavities painted with shielding paint and the effect is very, very good on reducing hum and buzz. The guitar was dead quiet. The pickups were a bit muddy and warm but I could have fixed that a bit in the mix.

The finishing on the guitar was also excellent and I couldn't complain about it - even the frets were done to a very high standard. A few slightly high frets but hardly anything to get excited about. The nut wasn't cut properly but that's easy to fix. The shaping of the body was great with body contouring and carve-outs on the back of the horn to allow easy hand access to the upper frets.

The big problem for me (and why I returned it) was the weight imbalance. The guitar is light overall but this thing is the worst neck diving guitar I've ever had. I couldn't play it sitting down without having the horn sit on my thigh and the guitar refused to stay put as it started sliding around. Standing up with the guitar was a disaster - it was like there was an anchor attached to the end.

I assume that the neck, truss-rod and locking tuners were just too heavy for the light body of the guitar. That is made worse by the weight reduction in the body for the contouring. Some suggested adding lead weights inside the control cavity but that sounds ridiculous to me.

I was really disappointed because I wanted to love and keep this guitar. Thomann clearly put a lot of effort into building and designing this guitar but it all came undone with this one major flaw that made it tiring and frustrating to use.