Harley Benton MB-5 SBK Deluxe Series

finally landed one of these yesterday after months of waiting for thomann's somewhat 'erratic' (to be polite) restock estimates. so after all that waiting, its ....okay....

there is nothing wrong with the bass itself, its as described, fretwork is perfect, neck is straight, finish is pretty perfect - all the usual critiques. aesthetically i have no problem with the tort pickguard, and the glaring white nut on a stealth black bass is an odd choice, but again, its a minor detail. out of the box, the setup was decent. the bridge plate is very, very slightly wonky.

the biggest problem is the sound. after being blown-away impressed with the roswell pickup in the HB 51 PB, next to it this poor humbucking twin single coil *thingy* of a pickup just doesn't cut it. its way too thin, the highs are too crispy, mids too pronounced and the bass is non existant. i'm fairly sure with EQ it can be solved of course it can, but off the shelf, its poor.

a passive stingray wannabe, i can live with. but one with such a poor quality pickup, and this whole twin single coil thing? eh maybe not so much. but i mean they had to fill out those three knobs on the control panel somehow.

having said that, here it comes - for the price, this is a beginners instrument. its a budget as budget can be. given the quality of the actual body, neck, fretwork, finish and so on, a pickup swap is well worth it. the thing *looks cool*. Maybe even cheap two band EQ and a battery box, again, if you have the tools, this is the perfect candidate.

so all in all its a good buy. but, dayum, thomann. stick a decent roswell in this thing for the price increase you sneak on every three months

*Short Review*
Take the bass out of the box, change the strings, adjust the string height and enjoy your new bass.

*Long Review*
I was really disappointed with the bass the first day it arrived. The bass had horrible fret buzz on the D string. The B and E strings were dead and all strings extremely rough to the touch and would chew through my fingers within 10 minutes of playing. I've been playing bass for 21 years and have never had strings that bad. The pick ups didn't really produce much sound at all. I usually keep my amp on 2-4, but I had to turn it up to 5-7 to get the same volume, when compared to my Fender P-Bass. My amp is an Ampeg BA-210.

All is not bad. I put a new set of Fender strings and adjusted the string height and the bass really came to life. It was like a different bass. No more fret buzz, I had to turn my amp down to the normal 2-4 volume and the bass sounds amazing.

Overall, I'm very happy I got the bass. I'd say it is a much better bass than the price suggest. For under $140 USD, you could really do a lot worse.

Use:
I primarily bought this bass to play wedding gigs since there are a couple of sets were I needed a five string and I don't really like playing 5 strings so I didn't want to spend much money.

Clarity:
The instrument really does look and feel more expensive than it is until you plug it in. The fretwork was really good, all the frets were as level as you'd expect for this bass and suprisingly no frets are sticking out which is a pleasant suprise for this price. The action was very high in my opinion but I have since found out some people like it like that. The intonation was dreadfull though. With factory strings it was almost impossible to set up the intonation properly so I bought a pack of DR PureBlues. But all of this is ok for the price. But the pickup is just horrid. The high are so prounounced and loud aswell as the hi-mids while there is no definition in the bass and low-mids frequency range. Once I plugged it in my MarkBass Little Marcus 500 and heard it I thought I got a defective bass and then I saw that people had the same problems online. I fixed this with a 13 dollar AliExpress pickup and it really is a dealbreaker for this bass. IMHO you can not use this bass in any sort of professional situation if you don't change the pickup.

Pros&Cons:
Pros - Good looking, pretty affordable and very playable after a decent setup and a new pack of strings
Cons - The pickup(whose production should be illegal), really cheap and low quality plastic nut and really bad strings

Conclusion:
If you want something to hold on to and use for a lot of years to come avoid this bass, buy the J or P style HB. If you know how to work on basses and install pickups, electronics etc. for not much more money you can build an excellent bass. The AliExpress pickup, and DR strings made the bass come to life and it sounds awesome now.

We have been pretty lucky with HB guitars to date so was about due one which took a little work to get set up, which is the luck of the draw with any mass produced instrument.
Mainly the frets needed levelling and dressing on top of the usual expected adjustments.
That done, the bass plays well and has a good tone and weighing in at just under 10lbs, feels like a proper bass.
Pros: looks good, sounds good, feels like a decent heavy beast
Cons: needed work to set up properly, was pretty much unplayable out of the box. The string spacing at the bridge didn't match the neck edges until I slipped 1mm shims in between the saddles. The factory strings, as others have said, have some strange tonal properties!
Conclusion: with a little setting up this is a perfectly workable 5 string with clever yet simple controls. Not bad at all.

I waited a long time for this bass. I can see why now. These basses [at that price] are absolutely fantastic and they seem to be selling out fast.
Finish in matte black is flawless and even better in the flesh.
Of course they are not medium or high end basses and there are flaws but the build quality, attention to detail and overall sound are much higher than one would expect.
I have a Sterling Stingray 5 and in comparison this is very close. I prefer the neck on the Harley Benton, fast and very playable over the Sterling.
There is huge output from the pickup and although passive it is very punchy. Maybe I got lucky?
On overall volume it is as loud as my active Sterling. The bass has with no noticeable electrical buzz and is well earthed.
As other reviews have said the front and back poles of the humbucker running into the two separate volume controls are strange and take some getting used to. The tone pot adds quite a lot of boost, although I had to eq my amp a little as the guitar is quite "bright" even with the tone fully rolled off.
Negatives are few and can be resolved: bridge is ok but I will replace and the tuners are very poor. I will replace these first.
I also wish they had gone the whole hog and put on a matte black pickguard. Tort shell is fine for now, not great but I will see about a replacement to black.
Overall I am delighted with the bass now that it has eventually arrived.
Its a pity it took so long from ordering to delivery [7 months] with a large number of "expected" due dates that came and went until the new stock eventually arrived.