Harley Benton HBV 990BEM 4/4 Electric Violin

Violin review

I am a music student and I bought this product for two main reasons: practicing at home without disturbing other people and having the possibility of connecting it to effects. I've been using it now for several months and I'm happy all right with it.
I know the list of "Cons" seems to be a bit long, but the overall experience is good and I don't regret my decision. Value/quality ratio is good, probably you wouldn't find anything as nice as this one for that money.

Pros:
Natural sound is low enough to allow you to practice at night without disturbing anyone on the house.
Lightweight for an electric violin, I've tried other EVs and they tend to be very heavy.
Line out 1/4" Jack connection, some of them have an small jack and they tend to fail very quickly.
Position of the tone controls and volume knob is out of the way, helping to avoid any undesired change on settings.
Sound is OK.
Case is OK.
Nice light bow.
Battery seems to last for a good while.
The tuning pegs took a while to settle, however once they did they work very well.
The micro tuner works fine although I find the ??? a bit small and not that nice to handle, they do what they are meant to do anyway.

Cons:
Headphones out is very noisy, Hiss is the word. I only use the line out into my FX unit "BOSS ME-50"
Tone controls are not very good, can't expect much anyway for that price, I use them flat. Better to use whatever you have in your mixer/DAW.
Faders and volume control got noisy quickly enough, even when I don't use the tone controls and only use the volume as an "On/Off", fully closed/fully opened.
Body, the outer plastic frame which also contains the electronics, seems to be very fragile and because of its shape wider at the rear and thiner near the centre of the instrument is very awkward to fit a conventional shoulder rest and that brings me to something that is completely unacceptable...
WORST SHOULDER REST EVER!!! Whoever designed that "useless thing" did not think at all: it falls out of the instrument, is too small and unusable. Since I bought it I tried it a couple of times and down to the box of useless stuff it went. WORST feature of the instrument by far, so do not hesitate to buy one along with the EV, also avoid this kind of SR
The grip is not good at all and they also come out of the instrument, this one is the one I have and I don't like it at all; go for the traditional ones, the piece that holds them to the instrument has longer arms and grips better. Honestly I think they should apologise to those who bought this violin for it and give them nice shoulder rests instead.

PIECE OF ADVISE: Get a cable with an "L"shaped jack so it fits properly in the line out without disturbing. Also use some velcro to hold the cable to the instrument so that way you will reduce any stress of the cable hanging from the line out and prolong its life.

Hope this help you decide.
Enjoy

Paulo

I waited to review for the product as i wanted to play couple of weeks first!!

Postives:

1. Excellent sound quality in the price range
2. looks fancy
3. midtone adjustment is of a good range.
4. can use a multi effect processor and make wonders for live performance and recording too, but u need to know how to workout with gears you have.

5. excellent shoulder rest where you can adjust the shoulder rest according to your height of neck or preference.

6. case is perfect and overall its very good violin at the price range.

7. Bow is really good, really really good to say carbon bow.

Negatives:

1. If u have enough violin experience you know you have to spend substantial amount on strings. The strings coming on the violin arent good quality, and no one can expect good string on a new violin, everyone has to change strings according to their preference of tone and softness/hardness

2. you will always need a spare battery, bcoz while performing in a gig and battery runs out u cant do anything.

3. the cable u choose should be chosen wisely otherwise amp will be damaged.

4. overall volume after connecting to amp is to low of the violin, so u need a good amp or output source.

overall: I am very very happy with what I am delivered by Thomann. I am an Indian and we dont get good violins here, so i bought it from here, there some issues of indian authority which delayed the delivery, but thomann was all time in touch with me, replying to all my mails within 15 hrs and keeping me updated of the situation. A very big thank you to the thomann team, and this is violin an intermediate should go for!!