Harley Benton MV-4JB Black

Possesseur d'une Squier Precision 40ème Annivesaire, que je joue exclusivement au mediator, je souhaitais une Jazz Bass à jouer au doigts.
Àprès avoir visionné plusieurs vidéos sur cette Jazz Bass, toutes avec d'excellentes critiques et démontrant un son de très bonne qualité, je me suis laissé tenter...
La lutherie est très soignée, les finitions aussi.
Le sillet en graphite et les pontets en laiton du chevalet contribuent à la bonne qualité du son et procurent un sustain très bon.
Le manche typique Jazz Bass, satiné, permet un glissé très confortable.
Les micros HBZ Custom Wound sont très bons des notes graves aux notes aigues.
L'électronique est bonne, et, chose de moins en moins courante, le potard de tonalité est très progressif ce qui permet d'exploiter à fond toute la palette sonore de la basse.
Seul petit bémol, je trouve, la qualité des mécaniques, cependant, elles tennent bien l'accord.
Vraiment, cette basse est de très bonne qualité, elle pourrait être proposée à un prix multiplié par 4.
C'est là qu'on se rend compte que les constructeurs quz l'on trouve sur le marché habituellement exagèrent et se font des marges de folie... Harley Benton démontre encore une fois qu'on peut faire de la (très) bonne qualité à un prix correct sans voler les musiciens...
En résumé, une très bonne basse de la marque HB que j'encourage à continuer de développer de bons produits.
Essayez là, vous l'adoptetez.
Merci Thomann.

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.