D
I wanted to like it but issues held me back
First of all, I am a guitar player and but I play bass for 3 years more seriously. I own 7 guitars and 3 basses including from high end to mid-range axes. For a long time, I was thinking to add a 5 string bass and a Musicman stingray to my humble bass guitar collection. So I decided to buy Harley Benton for good reviews and price-performance ratio. I bought this guitar from Turkey Istanbul. Also, I bought HB U-Bass and a telecaster with this purchase. Delivery took nearly 20 days. Guitars held on custom but I took hem from customs office with paying custom duty on-site. Here are my opinions:
Pros:
Good neck and low action. This bass makes you play and you can handle 5 strings easily. Also, it's a lot lighter than I thought. Quiet playable out of the box.Looks beautiful.
Cons:
Quality issues: tone and volume potentiometers are very badly installed and has a problem to center the knobs. I needed to reinstall them but there since there isn't proper drilling has not been done it loses the alignment eventually and it knobs acts weirdly and touches the pickguard when turning them. Also, some issues with neck joint screws blemish the guitar cosmetically but I don't care for it.
This bass has a very powerful preamp circuit. The tone is very boomy even with trying to scoop the midrange and bass from the equalizer. It's very hard to dial various tones when I compare it with my Ibanez SGR-1010 which is also active. Changing pickups through the 5-way switch has a very minimal effect on the tone itself. D and G strings have much less volume than the thicker lower strings. You need to be careful about your right-hand dynamics due to a huge volume difference between upper and lower strings. But my biggest problem is worse of all: preamp acts like an FM radio. I have radio channels on the background it makes it unplayable. I spoke with Thomann and they told me this behavior is normal. I don't have this problem with any of my active guitars and basses. This problem can be coming from grounding on my apartment electric infrastructure. If I haven't paid the customs fee for this guitar I would have sent it back but I will try to live with it maybe I will remove the active preamp. I am quite happy with my Harley Benton U-Bass and Deluxe Telecaster but MM-85A is a disappointment for me.
Pros:
Good neck and low action. This bass makes you play and you can handle 5 strings easily. Also, it's a lot lighter than I thought. Quiet playable out of the box.Looks beautiful.
Cons:
Quality issues: tone and volume potentiometers are very badly installed and has a problem to center the knobs. I needed to reinstall them but there since there isn't proper drilling has not been done it loses the alignment eventually and it knobs acts weirdly and touches the pickguard when turning them. Also, some issues with neck joint screws blemish the guitar cosmetically but I don't care for it.
This bass has a very powerful preamp circuit. The tone is very boomy even with trying to scoop the midrange and bass from the equalizer. It's very hard to dial various tones when I compare it with my Ibanez SGR-1010 which is also active. Changing pickups through the 5-way switch has a very minimal effect on the tone itself. D and G strings have much less volume than the thicker lower strings. You need to be careful about your right-hand dynamics due to a huge volume difference between upper and lower strings. But my biggest problem is worse of all: preamp acts like an FM radio. I have radio channels on the background it makes it unplayable. I spoke with Thomann and they told me this behavior is normal. I don't have this problem with any of my active guitars and basses. This problem can be coming from grounding on my apartment electric infrastructure. If I haven't paid the customs fee for this guitar I would have sent it back but I will try to live with it maybe I will remove the active preamp. I am quite happy with my Harley Benton U-Bass and Deluxe Telecaster but MM-85A is a disappointment for me.
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K
Does a little more than the price entitles
The built is poor quality: you can feel the fret edges over the neck, the neck isn't fast, it picks radio signal, it isn't hybrid passive which could have been nice as it eats up battery faster than expected. To compensate for the extended neck, they had to pull up the bridge closer to the pickups which is ok and finally, the neck pick up is placed where most of us would slap and so either you screw it in, either you adjust your technic.
The good :
- the 5 position switch really gives you 5 different basses sound, including jazz bass type and sort of MusicMan type it's really great to play with
- The sound is GREAT, punchy, maybe a little too much plain as in less less subtle tone as in a fender or a real MM, but with new strings slapped to it, it's amazing. I had friends try it at a jam, they bought theirs a week after. I do compensate with a EQ pedal or VTF of my Mark Bass amp
- Almost a year onward, it seems to hold on despite the cheaper quality of wood and mechanics
All in all, great bass to begin with, experiment on. I'll bring it to my luthier friend so he can maybe screw the soap further in to let me slap and fix the radio interferences
The good :
- the 5 position switch really gives you 5 different basses sound, including jazz bass type and sort of MusicMan type it's really great to play with
- The sound is GREAT, punchy, maybe a little too much plain as in less less subtle tone as in a fender or a real MM, but with new strings slapped to it, it's amazing. I had friends try it at a jam, they bought theirs a week after. I do compensate with a EQ pedal or VTF of my Mark Bass amp
- Almost a year onward, it seems to hold on despite the cheaper quality of wood and mechanics
All in all, great bass to begin with, experiment on. I'll bring it to my luthier friend so he can maybe screw the soap further in to let me slap and fix the radio interferences
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