JB-75MN NA Vintage Series : What the hey....!!!

This bass cam to my collection today. To be honest I did not expect much more than a playable, mediocre bass, but OH BOY was i surprised!

I have been an active bassist since the -80,s, and have owned a number of Fenders and Sadowskys. Now I play a Devon JB 5, but wanted a 4 sting. I decided to get a cheap bass which I could do some upgrading to. Since the pandemic has reduced gigs to the absolute minimum I could not spend a lot of money, so I took a chance on this Harley Benton.

I was immediately stunned by the building quality. Very nice 3 piece body that at a glance looks like one single. Smooth & thick C neck. Dead straight out of the box. Very fast! Good pots and surprisingly nice pups. sound very close to a late 70,s Fender Jazz. The bridge seems to work OK.

Some small cons: 2 frets are buzzing and needs some care. I play with a very low action, so others that play with higher action won´t notice this. Also, the frets are a bit rough. Easy to polish with some steel wool. Some fret ends needs to be fixed. The bass is heavy, but has good balance. There is no shielding of the electronics, so there might be some hum. Will fix this with some copper foil. The nut is of rather poor quality, but does the job so far.

This bass is a total surprise for a few bucks! I don´t think I wil do any mods on this one as I planned, except for some of the issues I have mentioned. It sounds and plays sweet.

What more can I say? I am deeply surprised!