All of these things considered, I think I just got a lemon and I still recommend this bass.
Fit and finish are excellent. I really love the satin-finished wood grain body. The neck is very nice, with stainless steel frets, and like everything HB it came set up almost perfectly out of the box. The neck pickup is really thick and meaty, and the bridge pickup has that awesome throaty MM sound. There is also quite a bit of deep, rich bass when you roll on the knob. You can get an amazing mix of tones out of this guitar in both active and passive modes and it sounds and looks like something that should cost you at least $1000. Output on this guitar is HOT, and it will play louder than a lot of other basses you might own.
For me, at least, this guitar was hindered by one very glaring issue -- I'm not sure if the preamp was damaged in transit, or maybe there were some wiring issues, but for whatever reason any time I rolled on any treble at all, it also produced a very loud, squealy buzzing noise that essentially made the guitar unplayable. The noise more or less disappeared when I switched it over into passive mode. I'm working with Thomann to resolve the issue right now, but this QC defect has stopped this guitar being something I can make a lot of use out of.
You might be rolling the dice a bit on this one, I don't know. However, it is a VERY nice bass and one that I'd say is worth the purchase.
