Harley Benton has just rolled out a pair of SC-550 Plus electric guitars that come factory-fitted with a pair of Fishman Fluence Classic humbuckers, and many players will greet this news with joy, and no little relief, safe in the knowledge that they can put the power tools and soldering iron away.
Look on guitar YouTube and you will find no shortage of videos showing you how a Harley Benton guitar can be souped up with Fishman Fluence humbuckers.
Swapping out an electric guitar pickup is relatively easy once you get the hang of a soldering iron. But fitting a set of active Fishmans to a Harley Benton is not necessarily an easy mod when you will most likely have to do some routing inside the control cavity to find a spot for the battery.
Power tools might be required, and if the idea of that gives you the heebie-jeebies, you’re not alone. But now you can put down the power drill, with Harley Benton having done all the hard work for you.
The Fishman Fluence-equipped SC-550 looks the same as its siblings. It shares the same single-cut silhouette. There is the AA flame maple on a solid okoume body, ivory binding, the shoulder-mounted pickup selector switch and trapezoid inlays betraying the design influence. But turn it around and you’ll see there’s a little plastic-covered compartment for the 9V battery, and those control knobs have push-pull functions to activate the Fluence ‘buckers’ alternate voicings.
There is pretty much something for everyone here, with Voice 1 is classic PAF-style humbucker. Voice 2 on the bridge humbucker is a little hotter, like the next-gen after market humbuckers of the late ‘70s, while the neck’s second voice is “clean, airy chime”, and Voice 3 offers vintage single-coil tones at the neck, overwound and beefier single-coil sounds at the bridge.
Elsewhere, it’s business as usual for the SC-550, with the glued-in nyatoh neck and roasted jatoba fingerboard, nickel hardware, the WSC LP17 Tune-O-Matic bridge, WSC Schaller-style J07 LKF locking tuners. These are part of Harley Benton’s more high-end Deluxe Series, so we have the 2.7mm Blacksmith stainless steel frets.
The dimensions are very much of the style, with a 12” radius fingerboard and 24.75” scale length, and you’re finish options are very much golden era-inspired, and maybe Slash-inspired too?
Those high-gloss Faded Tobacco Flame and Paradise Amber Flame stains have that vibe. Of course, if you like the idea of active humbuckers and the multi-voice system seems a little too convoluted, well, there is always the EMG-equipped SC-550 Plus.
The SC-550 Plus Fluence is available now, see Harley Benton for more details, head over to Thomann to grab one. They are retailing at £429/$484.
