Harley Benton BZ-5000 II NT

This bass is incredible! It is LOADED with features, and sounds incredible. The build quality is fantastic. It feels amazing, and looks incredibly beautiful.

The was only one very disappointing problem with it - as soon as I rotated the high frequency knob up to increase the treble, I mean like only 5%, I immediately started hearing an extremely loud high pitch hissing noise. I tried all the other knobs and they work great, and do not produce any noises, but the treble knob introduced very powerful ear-piercing hissing sounds, and thus the bass was basically unusable. In order to use the bass, I had to always keep the treble knob all the way down. I tried changing cables, plugging the bass directly into the amp, changing pickup modes, but the extreme hissing sounds just wouldn't disappear. This issue was present no matter what I tried. Only with the treble all the way down the bass would not create loud high pitch noises. That's sad because it basically means that the bass is faulty, and the EQ is not working.

I had to return it, but I'll order another one and give it one more chance because other than this terrible fault the bass is amazing! I hope I was just unlucky once, and got that one out of a hundred faulty unit.

I will update my review after getting the second bass and checking, if the other one has the same fault, or not.

When the bass was delivered, I was so hyped. When I first plugged it in a small bass amplifier, there was a lot of buzz with the input jack, but was kind of playable. After less than 2 weeks, the push-pull knob died and was not working in the passive mode. I don't much like active instruments, so I was playing only the passive mode until that point. Now I basically have an active bass. It is very playable. I have it set up in D standard. The bass holds the tune extremely well, and is massive in weight, as a bass should be. I feel great when playing it and I like that it has a lot of tone options, although I have all set to middle. Another minor issue is that the spacing between the 1st and 2nd string is slightly bigger than between other strings. This doesn't affect playability, but then again, I am a beginner bass player, so it might be an issue when playing more demanding stuff. All in all, the bass is very good, and if it didn't have all these issues, definitely I would give it al A+, but it is slightly disappointing and it is not the first time I had similar issues with mid-priced instruments from Thomann.

First 5 string bass purchase, never going back to 4 string ever again.

The look and feel of this bass is really superb. Feels awesome to play and the finish is beautiful.

Required a little playing around with the truss rod and action out of the box, but its easy enough and didn't take too long to get right for me. Comes with all the Allen keys you'll need to adjust these things, but to access the truss rod you'll need a phillips head 1 screwdriver.

Not sure if its a problem is just with my bass, but the EQ control knobs don't really seem to make a significant difference to my ear. Not really a problem for me, I'm not the type to use them, but might be worth bearing in mind if you like the options.

In conclusion, great premium feeling 5 string, if you are new to 5 strings I'd go with this one