Harley Benton's Fusion-T II Puts Stainless Frets, a Babicz Bridge and a Coil-Split Switch Under $500 — Across 18 Models

Every couple of years Harley Benton does the thing where they put a spec on a sub-$500 guitar that has no business being there, and the internet spends a week arguing about whether it's real. This month it's the Fusion-T II, and they didn't put one of those specs on it. They put about six.

Stainless steel frets. A roasted maple neck. Babicz bridges. Graph Tech nut. Locking tuners. Under $500. Across 18 models. I've been the "your $50 RAT is fine, calm down" writer here long enough that I'm supposed to be immune to spec sheets, and I still had to read it twice.

What They Actually Built

Rolled out through July, available now through Harley Benton and Thomann:

• Body: nyatoh, T-style outline with genuinely reworked ergonomic contours
• Neck: bolt-on Canadian roasted maple, Modern C profile, 25.5" scale
• Frets: 24 medium jumbo "Blacksmith" stainless steel — on a bolt-on Tele shape, which is a metal-guitar spec on a country-guitar body
• Fingerboard: 12"–16" compound radius, maple or rosewood, glow-in-the-dark side dots
• Pickups: Tesla Opus-1B / Opus-1N Alnico 5 humbuckers, covered or open zebra — plus two EMG variants, including the Custom Retroactive Hot 70
• Switching: five-way blade plus an "Alter Switch" that coil-splits and adds a "Ghost Coil" hum-cancelling mode — Harley Benton claims 10 tonal options, five per Alter Switch position
• Bridge: Babicz Z Series full-contact hardtail, or the FCH 2-Point Special Z-Series vibrato on Tesla-loaded models
• Hardware: Jinho JN-07 staggered locking tuners, Graph Tech Tusq XL nut, sprocket-wheel truss rod
• Price: €449–€499, everything under the $500/£500 line
• Lefties: actually included, across a big chunk of the range. Noted, because most brands still can't manage this at four times the money.

Eighteen models is the real headline. Not "a guitar with options" — eighteen actual configurations of fingerboard, bridge, pickup and finish, so you're picking a spec instead of settling for the one they made.

The stainless frets are the spec I'd point at if you only care about one. Stainless is the fret material you normally pay a refret tech four figures to install, and it's the difference between a neck that plays great now and a neck that still plays great in eight years of Tuesday-night gigs. On a $500 guitar that's the single biggest long-term value line on the sheet.

The Part That Breaks Your Presets

Here's what the press release won't tell you, and it's the thing that will actually bite you at soundcheck: the Alter Switch changes your output level, and your modeler doesn't know that.

That's not a knock on the guitar. It's what coil-splitting is. Split a humbucker and you drop a coil out of the circuit — you lose output, you lose low-mids, and the top end opens up. The guitar is doing exactly what it should. The problem is what happens downstream when you're going direct.

I run a Jazzmaster into an HX Stomp straight to PA, no amp on stage, and I have made this exact mistake in front of people. Here's the chain of events:

1. You build your patches on the full humbucker. Naturally — it's the loud setting, it's the one you dial the gain by. The amp block's drive gets set to land right where you want it with that hotter signal in front.
2. You hit the Alter Switch mid-set. Output drops. That amp block, which was sitting at the edge of breakup, is now feeding on a weaker signal — so it cleans way up. Not "a little brighter." A different gain stage.
3. You get quieter at the same time. Less output into the block means less perceived volume out of it, so the split position ducks in the mix right when you probably wanted it to cut through for a clean part.

So you press the switch expecting "same patch, more sparkle" and you get "same patch, less everything." Then you spend the rest of the set avoiding a switch you paid for. This is the same front-end math I walk through in why your overdrive sounds different with humbuckers — it's the pickup, not the pedal, moving the goalposts.

Setting It Up So The Switch Is Actually Usable

Four moves, in order. This takes about fifteen minutes and makes the Alter Switch a real performance control instead of a party trick:

1. Dial your core patches on the split setting first, not the humbucker. Backwards from instinct, and that's the point. Set your amp block's drive so the split position sounds right, then let the full humbucker push it harder into more gain when you switch back. Going that direction gives you clean→dirty on a pickup switch. Going the other direction gives you dirty→disappointed.
2. Put a clean-boost or gain block on a footswitch and assign it to the split. Roughly +2 to +3 dB, no drive, just makeup gain. That's it — that's the whole fix for the level drop. On a Helix or HX Stomp it's one snapshot assignment. This is exactly the same discipline as level-matching every preset on your board, just applied inside a single patch instead of across the setlist.
3. Trim treble and presence on the split side. Splitting opens the top end up, and a T-style bridge position with a coil dropped is already a bright, spiky place to live. If you're using the split for cleans, come down a couple notches or it'll read as ice-pick through the PA. The trade-offs between the two voicings are laid out in more depth in single-coil vs. humbucker for worship and ambient tone.
4. If you buy an EMG model, budget for the battery. The Retroactive Hot 70 variants are active, which means a 9V in the guitar and a completely different output picture — hotter, more consistent, and dead silent right up until it isn't. Know what actually dies when that battery drains before you find out on stage. Passive Tesla models don't have this problem at all, which is a genuine reason to pick them.

One more thing on the T-shape: a Tele body with two humbuckers is not a Tele, tonally. You lose the bridge single-coil spank that most "Tele preset" advice is written around, so don't chase it. If you do want that side of the instrument, the split position plus the settings in the country Telecaster tone guide will get you closer than any amp block will.

Should You Buy One

If you want a modern-spec workhorse and you're going direct, yes — and I don't say that reflexively about house brands. Stainless frets, a roasted neck, locking tuners and a Babicz bridge at €449 is not "good for the price." It's a genuinely well-specced guitar that happens to be cheap, and those are different sentences. The 24 frets and compound radius aim it at players who bend and shred, and the coil-split gives you a real second voice in a set where you can't swap guitars.

Just don't buy it expecting the Alter Switch to work for free. Spend the fifteen minutes, build the patch around the split, put a boost on the switch. Do that and it's two guitars for €449.

Skip that and it's one guitar with a button that makes you quieter. Which is a very expensive way to be cheap.