Harley Benton B-550 Black Progressive Series Reviews

Flawed but usable occasional 5 String

Initial thoughts, after one week of ownership.

The good: looks well put together and the lacquer is impressively shiny, although it is quite soft. The machine heads are up to the job and the tuning is stable enough. Intonation out of the box was not too shabby, although it did benefit from a bit of adjustment during full set up. The individual bridge pieces are perfectly aligned. The neck profile is slim and very comfortable in use.

Sounds: quite a limited range of tones, particularly lacking in brights. This can be tweaked through the amp though, to give a reasonable snap to the tone. Replacing the strings may help with this, but the supplied strings sound bright enough acoustically. The bass tones are deep and rounded.

The bad: Quite a long list I am afraid. Firstly the supplied battery lasted precisely 24 hours with the bass unplugged,essential with non switchable active circuits, as insertion of the jack plug switches them on. Only it later became apparent that the circuit was constantly live and no battery lasted more than two days. I ordered and installed a micro toggle switch from eBay to disconnect the active circuit so that I don't have to take the battery out all of the time. The ends of the fret wires are poorly finished all the way down the neck, with your hand slightly catching on every single one - this will wear off and is not noticeable when playing. The truss rod cover was not properly secured, with two of the screws not turned home, and one of the screw holes bodged with two attempts to fasten it. The neck itself was set with insufficient back bow, but the truss rod did its job and I have been able to correct that. The action out of the box was horrific, all the bridge saddles set at the same height even though the fretboard is curved, so work was needed to correct that. Lastly, for now, the neck has 24 frets, but the lower body cutaway only allows full access to 20, or 22 if you move your hand right around the neck. This is not such a big deal as this is the 'dusty end' of the bass, but an oversight that could be easily corrected. The slight overhang of the fretboard beyond the end of the neck at the body joint is just weird; I have no idea why this isn't cut off after the 24th fret.

Conclusion: Despite the little annoyances with quality and design this is a reasonable instrument at this price point. After a few hours work it is quite playable and will fulfil the role I have planned for it of occasional recording use - for performance I will stick with my more expensive 4 string basses. It is, despite the niggles, usable and fair value. I am not sure that it would suit a beginner as so much set up (and in my case some rewiring) is required, but you could always learn on the job.