NAMM 2025: Harley Benton and YouTube star and shred phenom Maxxxwell Carlisle have teamed up once again for a trio of high-performance electric guitars that present a heap of premium specs for an instrument that comes in around the magic $500 price point.
This 2025 refresh reimagines the MAX Fusion as a hard-tail with a walnut cap, offers an eye-popping holographic finish option, and refreshes the high-speed S-style in Purple Flame.
Carlisle, host of the Guitar MAX YouTube channel, says the Purple Flame model, which turns the green figured maple veneer of the original MAX Fusion purple, was a little bit of fan service.
“I asked people what other colours they would like to see and their number one choice was purple,” he says. “Just look at this purple flame maple burst guitar.”
The MAX Fusion range is top of the line as far as Harley Benton guitars go, and you’ve got plenty of premium appointments. Carlisle is going for the upscale, boutique vibe here. We have contoured nyatoh (aka eastern mahogany) bodies, with bolt-on roasted figured maple necks and matching roasted figured maple fingerboards.
Those fingerboards have a 12” radius and seat 24 jumbo stainless steel frets. Reverse headstocks come as standard.
The electric guitar pickup configuration sees a Tesla Plasma-RS2 rail-style humbucker at the neck partnered by a Tesla Plasma-X1 humbucker at the bridge.
These are hooked up to a three-way pickup selector, a mini-toggle for splitting the humbucker for single-coil tones, plus master volume and tone controls.
The Purple Flame and Holographic versions are equipped with a Floyd Rose 1000 Series vibrato, so dive-bombs are very much go with these two. The latter has all-black hardware, the former gold hardware because, well, when you’ve got that high-end look from the figured maple you’d best complement it with something fancy.
That walnut version of the MAX Fusion swaps out the Floyd Rose of its siblings in favour of one of those super-tidy Babicz Z-Series bridges. You’ll find Black Jinho J03 mini Rotomatic-style tuners on all three models.
As is the style for contemporary shred machines, you can make quick adjustments to the truss rod via a spoke wheel at the summit of the fingerboard.
This is an impressive S-style guitar for under $1000 and Carlisle believes that it is further evidence that we are living through another “golden age” of guitar design.
“I have said so many times we are in the golden age of guitar manufacturing right now because it is so easy to get a wonderfully made instrument,” he says. “There are a lot of good options out there.
“But when I wanted to come up with a signature guitar that I thought was going to not just be a great guitar for me but also represent my philosophy about guitars – and affordable instruments especially – this is it. This is what I came up with. This is the guitar, and I couldn’t be happier with it.”
The MAX Fusion signature model is available exclusively via Thomann. It is priced £425/$529 for the Holographic and Purple Flame models, £382/$475 for the Walnut.
For more details, head over to Harley Benton. Pick one up over at Thomann, where the German retail giant is offering them as a bundle with a variety of hard-shell guitar cases and gig bags.
