Harley Benton B-550 Black Progressive Series

High end bass for cheap.

Great 5 string bass with lots of tones. It is my go-to bass.

Great beyond option for first bass

The Harley Benton B550 bass guitar is a great instrument that stands out for its excellent price-performance ratio. It is ideal for both beginner musicians and a satisfying option for more experienced players. Here are some highlights of the Harley Benton B550 bass guitar:

Sound Quality: The Harley Benton B550 offers a rich and deep tone. Thanks to the wide tone adjustment options, it is possible to obtain sounds suitable for different music genres. You can successfully capture both full and bright tones.

Playability: This bass guitar stands out for its playability. A comfortable neck structure and fluid keyboard provide a comfortable experience even during long playing sessions.

Quality of Construction: The Harley Benton prioritizes quality while being affordable. The B550 is built using durable materials and proves to be a long-lasting instrument.

Aesthetic Design: With its modern and stylish appearance, the Harley Benton B550 offers a striking appearance on stage and in the studio. With different color options, you can choose a model that suits your personal style.

Various Possibilities: Featuring active electronics, it offers a wide range of tone control and sound shaping. These features help you easily achieve the sound you want.

Affordable Price: The Harley Benton B550 has a budget-friendly price tag. This makes it a great option for beginner musicians.

sold it

After years of playing guitar, this was my frist bass. Wrong choice. Very thick neck. Extremely heavy. Did not work with my wireless system. I sold it for a good price and got myself a PJ-45OP ; that one is everything the B550 is not - good looking too. No more 5-strings for me ; I play BEAD now.

Good Project Bass

After a few months the preamp would not work, frets needed polishing and the guitar needed a full setup to be close to playable

This bass might represent good value for money if you are confident setting up and maintaining your instrument. At this price, no one should expect perfection, and there are many issues. I will try to list them as objectively as possible so you can weigh up your options.

The pickup screws were poorly seated, slanted at dramatically incorrect angles and in some cases protruding several mm, in one case by about 6mm. This is a fairly easy fix, although reflects very poorly on whoever assembled or oversaw it.

The ball ends weren't properly seated in the bridge, leaving tuning stability compromised and potentially damaging the bridge.

I would suggest it needs a heavier set of strings, or more accurately, a heavier low B, due to very flappy tension, but that will depend on one's own preference.

The preamp is, as expected, poor quality and doesn't have much of an impact on output or tonal variety, it's generally not even worth the price of the battery.

The frets are functional and all sufficiently seated. The fret ends feel a little rough, but thankfully no overly protuberant ends, overly sharp edges or sprout as of yet. They have received minimal to no levelling, dressing, crowning, polishing or the like, but that's probably to be expected. Some tweaking with fret rubbers will allow one to vastly improve the feel of these frets if properly applied.

The pickups themselves are fairly weak and anaemic, although that is not surprising for cheap stock pickups. They can at least produce some passable tones. It's unfortunate they made them Bartolini P4 sized, making a pickup upgrade much more expensive and effectively prohibitive relative to the cost of bass itself. A more common sized route such as the EMG 40 would have made more sense to me, which would open up both access to much cheaper replacement pickup options in general and also a much healthier second hand market.

The fretboard feels dry, rough and grainy, if you are used to something like rosewood or ebony. Black walnut has something of a reputation for not holding onto frets very well long term, but so far I haven't had any issues with this.

The inlays are a mixed bag. They have surprisingly little filler, having seemingly been cut and seated accurately, although they are made of what appears to be very cheap, tacky faux pearl plastic, no big surprise. Their position/rotation relative to each other and the frets is all over the place, off centre and at disjointed angles. It appears nothing short of comedic up close, but not particularly noticeable at distance. Honestly, I'd prefer no inlays to this.

The electronics appear to be soldered passably, although the pots are cheap, poorly seated and have a lot of give and wobble in their rotation. These will likely need an overhaul before long due to solder joints potentially breaking due to all the movement or likely pot failure.

The acoustic properties of the bass itself are a pleasant surprise. It sounds significantly better acoustically than I had expected, so no real complaints there, and this is undoubtedly one of the most important things.

The neck is straight, so far at least. I had to make initial truss rod tweaks to correct neck relief, although this is the case with pretty much every bass and guitar I've ever bought, so nothing unusual.

The bridge is functional, although I'd be very careful not to strip out the heigh adjustment screws on the saddles, as I have doubts as to the hardness/quality of the metal used; the same goes for the saddles themselves. The tuners seem adequate and are firmly seated, with no excess wobble or movement.

All in all this may seem hyper critical, but I think it's important to understand these guitars are not sold at such prices due to anything miraculous. They can likely be priced this way because the QC they go through is close to non-existent and they are rapidly mass produced without much scope for care or detail, at least if the one I received is anything to go by. There are a plethora of potential issues you may have to deal with. If you are confident, or at least willing to try, to learn how to maintain your instrument yourself, this may represent a good deal, since the same or worse can be said for basses which cost significantly more than this.

Despite all the issues, I'd say the price I paid for this is fair. If properly maintained and corrected, this bass does it's job, being quite sufficient for bedroom noodling, recording rough bass parts and the like.

Very satisfied

We really love this bass. Looks really cool!

İ recommend it!

Great value for money

Good sound ,5 strings . For that kind of money I get more than expected. For beginners is perfect . I’m really like sound .Good quality.

142 euros for 5-string bass - what can possibly go wrong?

Actualy nothing. First of all - what do you want if it's price is half (or more) lower than similar models by other companies? A miracle? Nice try, but it doent's work like that. BUT. Harley Benton low-cost-series is an affordable chance for guys from Easter Europe like me to try any tipe of instruments before buying something that worth 2 of my monthly salaries (hello 500 euros per month). And i really glad that i had such a chance: i realised that 5-string a not convinient for me and 135-th string on 34' is just doesn't work properly and even in theory can not have proper tension for B-note and not being a spaghetti. Why does people still doing this in 2021 is a great mystery for me. About miracle: everything in bass was good, except of one problem - the screw protruded from the one of pickups by 3-4 millimeters and there was no way to tighten the screw. What about sound - bass sounds good.

Conclusion: this bass is a good chance to try the combination of things that you want to find in the future. Actualy it's good by itself, but i 'm not a guy from youtube who can say "Holy *****, HB making unbelievably cool stuff for THIS money". Maybe i'm just not lucky enough and actually the phrase above is true in 99%, but in my case it's not. Anyway it just works properly and i'm fine with it.

Greetings from Russia, sorry for bad english. Have a nice day btw

Terrible packing resulting in damage

I ordered this bass and got an automated confirmation. Then I heard nothing for a week. I emailed multiple times but always got an automated response until finally I contacted Harley Benton and explained the situation. On the 8th day I finally got a response with a tracking number and it showed up on time. When I got it the box looked beat up and upon opening it discovered it was sparsely packed with crumpled paper. Who packs a wood instrument in crumpled paper? So as a result the bass had a bad gouge in the head stock and the electronics were shorting out. I contacted them multiple times to finally get them to agree on making it right. So they sent a second bass and it arrived yesterday. Box looked a little better but again upon opening it saw the same terrible and sparse packing with crumpled paper only on the top and bottom. but the front and back were not covered at all. Sure enough the bass was damaged right in front with the pickup smooshed way back into the body. I could not get the screws loose as will have to pay a local person to fix.

If you are looking for your first bass, look no further.

I record my own music at home, and having a few guitars already, I decided to give basses a chance.

And I could not have asked for a better first contact.

This bass plays nicely. The action is a bit on the high side for me, as it has to acommodate that low 5th string, but it feels very good to play with. No sharp frets, stays in tune, and the neck feels very smooth.

Sound wise, phenomenal. It can get a bit muddy on the 5th string if u start cranking up some distortion, but nothing that trimming the low frequencies with the eq knob in the bass can't fix.

Also, did I mention you can mix both pickups while also tweaking the bass and treble for a huge variety of tones BEFORE actually getting to any amps or pedals?

To end the review, I'll talk about the body of the bass itself. It looks beautifully and it's properly balanced, so you won't have to worry about any neck dive while playing it.

Overall, a VERY solid bass ready for anything you need.