Harley Benton MV-4JB Black

Bought for my young son as a Christmas present. I inspected it visually when it arrived and neglected to plug it in to test (my bad). He opened it on Christmas day and we both quickly realised there were real problems with it:

1) EVERY single on of the control knobs were loose.. not the plastic knobs, but the actual potentiometers hand not been bolted to the scratchplate correctly.
2) The jack socket was also loose.
3) Fret ends were VERY sharp.
4) Front Pickup was totally dead (measured it's impedance and it obviously had a break in the coil somewhere)

I have to say this is the first time I've had a bad experience with this company and their products. As it was Christmas, the support lines were dead, so no help at all from Thomann. Fortunately I'm an experienced guitar tinkerer, and I'm happy to say in the end we were able to resolve all the problems eventually, but we were stuck with a non functional Jazz bass for a week or so and needed to order and fit a new set of W*******n pickups to be ordered from another on-line retailer. When Thomann were eventually contacted, they didn't really offer any further support as we'd already 'fixed' the issues (at our own cost).

With the various quality control issues fixed, this is a nice bass - well finished and playable, if a little on the heavy side. Looks really good to, my son loves the old school look of the tort pickguard with the grab-bar (no accounting for taste). The fingerboard is laurel, and as usual was a little dry out of the box, but soon darkened as it was played in. The roasted satin-finished neck, bound fingerboard and block coloured headstock look the absolute business and the lightweight 'modern' tuners are actually a really good, if slightly odd, choice. The bridge saddles being brass on a bass like this is just insane. As a take on a classic 70's Jazz bass, it has the feeling of a 70's bass that's been modded, which is very cool.

Sadly, as a result of all the issues, I don't feel I should really comment on the 'factory' sound of this instrument - I've no idea what the stock pickups sounded like. The accoustic tone is very warm and full for a jazz - thanks to the density of the body wood. There are no buzzes or problems with proud or sunken frets like you sometimes get on these cheaper basses.

Such a shame this bass.. it's got so much going for it but obviously on our particular instrument someone in quality control really dropped the ball. A few simple checks would have almost certainly picked up all those issues that never should have been there, regardless of how inexpensive the bass is. So a nice bass overall.. but soooo hard to forgive all those issues, sorry Thomann.

Für den Preis ist das Gesamtpaket wirklich überragend. Die Verarbeitung war bei meinem Model ohne Fehl und Tadel. Bis auf ein sehr trockenes Griffbrett und einen Tonpoti der irgendwie nur 0% und 100% kann, war wirklich alles makellos. Der Sound der Pickups hat mir persönlich nicht ganz so zugesagt, weil die doch etwas harmlos klangen. Aber das ist nur eine Geschmacksache. Die Tuner sind leider nicht so toll.

Aber worüber soll man sich bei dem Preis bitte beschweren? Es ist mir schleierhaft, wie man dafür so ein tolles Instrument anbieten kann. Daher volle 5 Punkte und meine Empfehlung für alle, die einen günstigen Bass mindestens auf Classic Vibe Niveau suchen!