PJ-74 VW Vintage Series : Fully satisfied - excellent value

I've been a (bad :) ) guitarist for the past 15 years and always felt tempted to start learning a bass guitar. My plan was to use this bass mainly for home practising and experimenting with the bass or maybe smallish jam session with friends or in the pub.

I did quite a lot of research - my top priority was playability over looks. This was my pick based on the reviews here and some youtube videos as all of them claim very good value for the money (so my expectation was quite high).

The bass arrived in good packaging and out of the box it looked very well. The finish is very good for the money. Nice color of the body and matching headstock, neck with a great wood texture and satin finish. The frets are nicely done and there are no sharp edges. There are small flaws around the truss rod hole and the place where the neck joins the body. The pickguard has some very small flaws around the edges. It is covered with a thin film, which can be removed and the looks and feel of it will greatly improve. All in all I am just nitpicking here - the finish is really good and I wouldn't be bothered by it for instruments costing twice the money of this one.

From playability perspective the bass is amazing and very well setup out of the box. Bass arrived almost in tune. The intonation (through saddles on the bridge) is well setup and the intonation across the fretboard is good (checked with a tuner), the neck is straight. The same applies to the action (though I adjusted it to my taste). The bridge, nut and tuners feel cheap (you can actually find them to be low cost parts on aliexpress), but do their job. I had some issues with rattles in the bridge, but that got resolved by playing with it a bit. The pickups work fine and give a nice tone (nothing really fancy, but works well). Again, amazing value for the money - the bass is perfectly playable.

All in all I am very satisfied and happy with this purchase - I've been playing the bass every day for the past month and I am still enjoying it (and haven't found any more serious flaws yet). Just like the others I don't understand what kind of magic HB does in order to deliver that good bass for the money.