Harley Benton B-650 Black Progressive Series

This 6 string bass is remarkably well made considering its price tag of only € 199,-. Stable and smooth neck with a natural feeling fretboard. Decent frets, proper intonation and string spacing and reliable tuners. The push/pull volume knob seconds as a passive/active selector. Next are balancing, trebble and bass. Nice black finish and chrome hardware. Its sound is decent, covering my basic needs. This is my first six string bass and having played only 4 string basses it does take a while to get used to the much wider fretboard but it gave me great pleasure getting there in a few weeks. I would recommend this as a low budget 6-string practice bass guitar, however:

The rear control cavity cover is made of flimsy plastic and does not stay flush. One extra screw would have prevented that. The bass knob was whobbling and cracking indicating bad installation and quality control. After a few weeks it failed to produce any sound. This should not have been shipped. I have enquired for a repair and/or return.

Features: Four stars, five if it had all worked fine.
Sound: Three stars, I would have liked a little more high freq but this bass is definately not boomy
Quality: 3 stars, as aforementioned. The rear cover is cheaply made and the installation of the knobs leaves to be desired. I would with no doubt give 4 stars if it worked properly and 5 with a proper cover.

I bought this bass as a newbie for the six strings and the quality is not as I expected.... Yeah, it's a cheap bass but the neck actually feels nice and comfortable, thanks also to the small string spacing.
The EQ is nicely made and gives you the opportunity to switch to passive pickups with a Push&Pull pot and the hardware is well made.

Obviously there are also some cons:
- the body shape isn't that "smart", the small horn is really too small and the bass tends to fall off when playing sit;
- I don't really like the double truss rod system in the neck;
- the finish on the neck feels cheap (but it's a very cheap bass, so it doesn't really matter);
- when it arrived at my home, it was unplayable (it needed a huge setup to remove the huge fret buzz), also some nut slots were too low, so I had to remove the nut itself and place a shim under it.

A nice bass if you're entering in the world of the six strings, but I would recommend this only to a newbie such as I am.