Harley Benton MM-84A SB Deluxe Series

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.

I was not sure what to expect from a budget bass, but having read reviews of other HB basses (mostly good), I decided to take a chance. On arrival I carefully looked it over for damage and not a mark found. I then looked at the build quality mindful of what others had remarked on the HB brand, and found no real problems considering its price tag. You really need to look very close and be very critical to find fault. I am very happy with the quality. The only thing I have done is finish the fret ends a little better and only took 10 minutes to do. The neck feels very chunky and is 2mm thicker than my Fender P but I soon got used to it and my hands are on the small side too. It is a bit narrow up at the body end for my liking. I had to adjust the truss rod a little but nothing to worry about, and not at all unusual. All the frets were fine. Output from the two Wilkinson pickups was huge and had to back off the volume but the split coil 5 way switching works well as does the 3 band EQ. No balance but have not found that a problem. A bit more hum than expensive bass's but not excessive when some top end is taken off. This is a big bass and youngsters might struggle but I am not that big myself and manage fine. You will need a big bag or case too (won,t fit any of mine). A novice may find a thinner neck better for them than this one. Over all I am very happy with this bass and is well worth the money. I play in a band with a Fender P and Schecter Riot, and got this to re string B,E,A,D for those "odd" numbers. "Job done"