Watch It First
Harley Benton keeps releasing guitars that make you double check the price tag.
The Fusion-IV HH is their swing at a proper superstrat – Floyd-style tremolo, Tesla humbuckers, a flat fast neck – aimed straight at players who grew up wanting an Ibanez but couldn’t justify the price.
I got hands-on time with the Purple Metallic version, and here’s the full breakdown of what it gets right and where it still shows its budget roots.
The Superstrat Formula, Done Properly
Nyatoh body, roasted flamed maple bolt-on neck, rosewood board with a compound radius – this reads like a spec sheet copied from guitars costing three times as much, and that’s clearly the point.
Tesla Pickups Instead of Generic Ceramics
The HH layout uses Tesla Opus-1 Alnico 5 humbuckers, gold-covered, one in each position. These aren’t the flat, one-dimensional ceramic pickups you’d expect at this price – there’s actual dynamic response here, and the Alnico magnets give a rounder top end than a lot of budget shred guitars manage.
A Neck That Doesn’t Feel Like an Afterthought
The Modern „C” profile is thin without feeling flimsy – 21mm at the first fret, 23mm at the twelfth. Combined with the compound radius (305mm to 406mm), chords feel comfortable low on the neck and bends stay effortless up high. That’s exactly the tradeoff a superstrat is supposed to make.
Playing It: The Tremolo Situation
The Babicz FCH 2-Point full-contact tremolo is the real headline feature here. It’s not a Floyd Rose locking system, so there’s no locking nut faff when you want to restring or tune up – but it still holds pitch impressively well through dive bombs and flutters.
Stability isn’t quite at Floyd Rose Original levels if you’re doing genuinely aggressive whammy abuse, but for 90% of players doing normal expressive vibrato and the occasional dive, it’s more than enough – and a lot less annoying to live with day to day.
Fretwork is genuinely good for the price bracket – 24 stainless steel Blacksmith frets, medium jumbo, no sharp ends, no dead spots on the unit I played. The locking tuners are geared and hold tuning well even with the tremolo in constant use.
Tone Through an Amp
Through a Marshall JVM410H, the bridge humbucker had plenty of bite for rhythm work without turning to static, and cleaning up the volume knob revealed usable clean and edge-of-breakup tones too – versatile is the right word here.
Cranked through an EVH 5150 Iconic 40 for higher-gain territory, it handled palm mutes and faster runs cleanly, which is really what this guitar is built for. Add something like the JHS Angry Charlie V3 in front for extra push and it turns properly aggressive without losing note definition.
For lead lines, a compressor like the Keeley Compressor Plus evens out picking dynamics nicely and helps sustain notes through the Babicz bridge’s slightly brighter voicing.
What’s the Ghost Coil Switch For?
That little mini toggle next to the main switch splits the humbuckers into a thinner, single-coil-like voicing without the usual signal-lifting fuss. It’s not going to fool anyone into thinking it’s a real Strat pledge in disguise, but it’s a genuinely useful option for cleaner rhythm parts and adds real tonal range to the 5-way switch on its own.
Combined with the 5-way switch, you’ve effectively got ten usable tonal combinations here, which is a lot more flexibility than most guitars in this price range bother offering. It’s the kind of feature that separates a guitar built by people who actually play versus one built purely to a spec sheet.
Compared to the older Fusion-III line, Harley Benton clearly used owner feedback to sharpen this one up – better fretwork reports, a more reliable tremolo, and pickups that sound less generic. If you’ve played a Fusion-III and weren’t sold, it’s worth giving the Fusion-IV a proper look before writing the range off.
Specs at a Glance
- Body: Nyatoh
- Neck: Bolt-on, roasted flamed maple, Modern „C” profile
- Fretboard: Rosewood, compound radius 305-406mm (12″-16″)
- Scale length: 648mm (25.5″)
- Frets: 24 stainless steel Blacksmith, medium jumbo
- Pickups: Tesla Opus-1B (bridge) and Opus-1N (neck), Alnico 5, gold-covered humbuckers
- Controls: 1 volume, 1 tone, 5-way switch, mini toggle for Ghost Coil
- Bridge: Babicz FCH 2-Point Special Z-Series full-contact tremolo
- Tuners: Jinho JN-07 locking, geared
- Finish: Purple Metallic, high gloss
The Niggles
A few real owners have flagged small issues, and I noticed a couple myself.
- The pots can feel slightly loose out of the box – an easy fix, but worth knowing before you assume something’s broken.
- The roasted maple neck doesn’t always look quite as dark/figured as the marketing photos suggest – unit variance is real.
- Fretboard can arrive on the dry side; a drop of fretboard oil sorts it out in minutes.
- No case or gig bag included, so budget for one separately if you’re gigging with it.
None of that is a dealbreaker, it’s just the kind of small print that budget-conscious brands trade off to hit this price.
Who Should Buy This
If you want an aggressive, versatile rock/metal guitar with a usable tremolo and don’t need a locking Floyd, this is a smart buy. It’s also worth comparing against the Schecter Sun Valley Super Shredder if you want a similarly aggressive guitar with a different pickup voicing and a fixed bridge instead.
Pairing-wise, a Marshall Studio Classic SC20C gives you classic rock crunch if metal isn’t your only goal, while the Fusion-IV’s HH layout and 5-way switch mean you’re not locked into one tone all night either way.
If you mostly play acoustic-adjacent clean tones and never touch the whammy bar, you’re paying for features you won’t use – a simpler fixed-bridge guitar would serve you better and cost less.
Final Verdict
The Fusion-IV HH is one of those Harley Benton releases that makes you wonder how the pricing works. Tesla humbuckers, a full-contact tremolo that actually holds tune, a properly carved fast neck – this is a genuinely gig-ready superstrat, not a beginner guitar wearing a superstrat costume.
It’s not flawless – the small fit-and-finish quirks are there if you look for them – but none of them affect how it plays or sounds night to night.
For anyone who wants a do-it-all rock/metal machine without paying Ibanez Prestige money, this is one of the smarter picks out there right now.
