JB-75MN LH NA Vintage Series : Top notch for the money

This is my third HB guitar and first bass, just to qualify my comments, I own numerous guitars ranging from HB to a Duesenberg Paloma at 10 times the price of the HB guitars.

The ethos behind the HB brand of guitars ( in my understanding ) is to provide well made instruments at very affordable prices, all my HB guitars have met and more importantly exceeded this, maybe I have just been lucky in the ones I have received, but this is all I can give my opinion on.

Sure they are not perfect in every way which is usually the case with far more expensive guitars as well, but being so pocket friendly any minor things like setup and sharp fret ends can be forgiven and easily rectified.

The controls work better than expected, they are budget small sized pots but the wiring is extremely good and all the pots are smooth and noise free, a good range of tone can be dialed in by blending the Bridge and Neck pickups for a desired tone, i.e. for a bright slapping tone have the Bridge full on and the Neck full off and for a smooth jazz sound do the reverse and roll off some tone with the tone control, or go any where in between, the range is very good if you have set a good tone on your amp to start with, personally, I’d start with the amp tone controls at their mid points and the the Bass Bridge full on Neck full off and tone full up, then adjust the tone controls on the amp until you have the brightest sound with depth or weight that you are likely to want to hear, from then on you should be able to dial back the highs using the guitar controls alone, without having to keep going back to your amp

Tone is a rabbit hole that we can all get lost in and is very personal, so just enjoy the process of finding the tone that pleases you.