Harley Benton MM-84A SB Deluxe Series

Tato baskytara je velmi povedená. Krásný a rovný krk, mechaniky chodí skvěle. Narozdíl od pětistrunné varianty nepadá na hlavu a je hezky vyvážená. Pražce nevyžadovaly žádnou péči, byly hezky zabroušené. Po naladění a lehkém snížení dohmatu mi parádně sedla do ruky. Hraje se na ni skvěle, nikde nic nedrnčí. Jedinou výtku mám k tomu, že krkový snímač je těsně u krku, což znemožňuje hru slapem. Bylo by lepší, kdyby hmatník měl jen 22 pražců, tím by vznikl ideální prostor. Zvuk je naprosto dokonalý. Ještě se mi na žádné base nestalo, abych byl spokojený s EQ na nulách. Tady zvuku nemám co vytknout, i když dám korekce na base do prostřední polohy a na kombu (Quantum QC421) taky. Všechny polohy přepínače jsou výborné a basa je díky tomu zvukově naprosto univerzální. Ikdyž ztratím záruku, tak jsem se rozhodl poslední dva pražce vtáhnout a hmatník zbrousit, abych vyřešil jediný nedostatek, který tato basa má. Za ty peníze vřele doporučuji. Jsem si jistý, že hravě převálcuje nástroje z mnohem vyšší cenovkou.

Není tomu co vytknout. Přišla dobře seřízená a dokonce i naladěná. Povrchová úprava, lesk a krásné barevné provedení je opravdu de luxe. Nenašel jsem na base ani žádné nedodělky, nepřesnosti v montáži, jaké se v této cenové hladině vyskytují u jiných výrobců. Zvuk nástroje je vyníkající, rovná se nástrojům několikanásobně dražším a mnohé z nich i převyšuje. Akorát struny jse ihned vyměnil za lepší. S novými strunami je to velice dobře hratelný nástroj za neuvěřitelnou cenu.

The short version
Looking for a great active bass for a reasonable price? Look no further! You have found it. This 4 kg guitar Sounds extremely good. For the price it is a no-brainer. Go get it! Read the tip at the end!

Features: It has a bunch of cool features, and you can get pretty much any sound you would like from it. The lever that lets you choose between the pickups work great and it has five settings. This in combination with the 3-band eq gives you an AMAZING amount of flexibility. For the price this is amazing. But the eq does not work as well as the stingrays. But that is a bass guitar that costs 13 times as much. The eq on this bass is more then enough for the price.

The only sound i could not get from it is a very low almost sine wave like filler. But for that is what i have my jazz bass with old strings for!

Sound: To be honest i was kinda disappointed about the sound on this thing. That was until i figured out that the strings that came with it sucks major .......... (Fill in the blank). So i jumped right on my bike and went to get some new ones. MAN AM I GLAD THAT I DID. This thing sounds so freaking good for the money it is unbelievable. I compare it to guitars that costs 1200-1600 dollars.

Quality: This is where i have to give it 4/5 stars. The nobs for eq and volume are really bad put together on my guitar. It must be a production error or something. They do work perfectly fine, but they are not fitted correctly and are not horisontal to the body. Also they do feel kinda cheap when you turn them.

There was also a little chip on the neck where you can see it got manhandled.

Other than this it looks amazing! Much better then on the pictures here. In real life it is a bit darker. I was actually worried about the looks because i really wanted this guitar, but for the features and sound. I thought it looked kinda ugly on the picture to be honest. But when it came i saw that it is a real beauty.

Summery: Run and buy, or løp and kjøp as we say in Norway.

IMPORTANT TIP: The strings that comes with this guitar. Change them. When i put some Ernie Ball Super Slinkies on it.... It made all the difference. I was looking for the sound of a stingray for less money when i bought this guitar. And i knew stingrays came with super slinky strings. It sounds amazing now.

I bought this having seen the positive reviews and wanted to add to them. I've rated this bass at 5 stars for features, sound quality and overall. Having said that, there are a couple of very minor niggles, but I don't think they're enough to lose a star.

The guitar was pretty well set up out of the box. The neck relief didn't need any adjustment, the only tweaks I made were to set the intonation and lift the middle strings slightly to match the curvature of the fretboard. I lowered the height of the pickups as they were a bit high for my liking. All very minor stuff, most of it personal preference.

I changed the strings to D'Addario flatwound chromes, as they're my preferred strings so I can't comment on the quality of the supplied strings, other than to say they looked fine.

The sound range you can get from this bass is great! I wanted something with the flexibility to get a post-punk-gothy-alternative sound and this is perfect. The three band EQ, combined with the pickup switching gives me just what I wanted. I could imagine using the split-coil settings with a bit of drive to get a nice bluesy rumble or tame things down a bit for some nice funk bass. Nice and versatile.

The finish was pretty good out of the box. No sharp frets, the body looks fine, no problems with the headstock and all of the hardware looks OK. One minor grumble is that the tuners feel a little bit cheap. They have a flimsy feel to them. Having said that they're holding tune very well and as I mentioned it's not enough for me to knock a star off.

One other thing to mention is that the jack socket on my bass is quite stiff and has occasional connection problems. Nothing major and I will probably have a proper look at it when I get a moment to take it apart. Nothing really too major but worth making a note of in case you're not comfortable doing some basic maintenance. Again, this isn't serious enough to warrant marking down.

One final thing to mention is that I didn't get a battery in the box with this guitar, so do make sure you've got a spare 9v to use. That might have been something to do with new Brexit red tape.