B-550FL BK Progressive Series : Pleasantly suprised

I have been playing a fretless 4 string (various) for a number of years and decided that I wanted to extend the tonal possibilities to a 5 string but without spending too much to see if the added string was an essential I needed.

After much internet and soul searching over build desire I stumbled on the H.B. fretless...

Seemed too good to be true... 5 string. Active pick ups. nicely styled...Must be a nag to play... but hey, £107..., Ok lets order and see.

It came today (mon) after ordering last week (tues), and... Well I am a little in awe of the whole deal to be honest.

Out of the box... It is very aesthetically pleasing, but also being an alder body is surprisingly light. The finish is smart black and unfussy. the quality of finish at this price point is superb. The neck, truly straight. Action a little high but easily sorted. strings are awful cheap roundwounds, but... in tune with each other and intonation not too bad too. A quick tune and adjustment to the bridge helped out, but I will be changing to flatwounds asap, so full set up can wait. Even so, it is remarkably playable and the fretboard which I expected to be a little bad is actually as good as found on many fretleses £700 range.

The pups are not quite what you would expect either, don;t get me wrong they're not brilliant but they are more than workable and in conjunction with the active pull pot volume control and tone pots there is a range of tone that is both usable and expressive.

I will break it in over the next month and update later, but my initial thoughts are that this is a very very good fretless bass for a very little price... stunned really.