Harley Benton B-550FL BK Progressive Series 4-stars Reviews

All around very good.

very lightweight and playable.

Fretboard could use some oil.

only issue is one of the strings came with a very large cut on it, through the outer winding. I wasn't planning on using the stock strings but this string is pretty much gone.

no damage on the fretboard around the cut so must have been a bad string from the get go.

Overall really good for the price.

This bass is really fun to jam with and it's fairly easy to modify. My only criticism which can easily be fixed was I don't like how the strings sound on the bass so I changed them myself. However my taste in bass sound is subjective. Fantastic price for the quality and another excellent make of Harley Benton

How hard is it to finish it properly?

Great tone and everything works for an amazingly low price, but maybe it's too low? A little quality control on the fitting wouldn't go amiss. Mine needed a thick shim to be made and fitted under the front of the neck heel before I could drop the bridge saddles to a playable height. And I had to fettle the nut slot height. The allen key supplied doesn't fit the B string saddle screws and spins uselessly. Not good enough on a new bass.

Great fretless bass for beginners

My sister is a double bass player, and I've always been amazed by the expressivity/tone of the instrument and the ability to play microtonal stuff/alternative tunings... this, together with listening to Cynic, Exivious and Spiral Architect, made me want a fretless bass really bad!

I'm extremely happy with this instrument. From the perspective of a beginner, the bass sounds great and it's easy to play. Once you get used to the tone controls, you can get close to a more "jazzy", warm fretless sound. It stays in tune for a long time, and the strings are fine. And especially... it's super cheap! I believe this has a great quality considering its price.

If anything, I would say that the bass gets distorted easily with the B string, and if not you have to play it very softly which sometimes doesn't match the dynamics I'm using on the other strings. I'm not sure if this has to do with the electronics, the neck bolts or the string itself.

Great fretless for home studio recordings

Great fretless for home studio recordings! Smooth and easy though I replaced the roundwound strings with flatwounds to get this typical fretless sound. Let your Mick Karn out!

good deal

very nice bass to start and home use,

B string is a little bit unstable in terms of tuning.

Good quality, especially considering the price

I bought this bass as I had wanted to try a 5 string fretless bass for a long while. The first impression was favourable. The instrument looks good and feels solid. It is also surprisingly light and easy to handle. The inbuilt eq and other features sound nice, although they drain the battery pretty quickly. A slight minus is that the fretboard is entirely blank, and therefore not very easy to handle for a complete beginner to the fretless world! All in all this is a good product, well worth its price

As good as it gets for the money

I neede a stop gap fretless, and this cheap bass did its job admirably. Sometimes the tone wasn't all I hoped, as it occasionally lacks sustain, but other than that, I've played fretless basses that cost three times as much that aren't as nice.

If anyone wants to start learning fretless or like me, they need a backup bass they know will do the job but are limited in their budget, then look no further.

Surprisingly good for the price

Surprisingly good for the price. I was looking for an affordable 5 string fretless bass to carry around as a backup, and this fits the bill perfectly. I was expecting to swap the electronics out, but after giving it a test drive and looking under the hood, and decided to keep them as is. The electronics are really well put together for an entry level instrument, and provide a good tonal versality. Not mentioned in the description: the volume knob is a push-pull allowing for passive/active operation.

Nice fretless for very little money

I bought this bass for practice and gigging with a live band. I am quite happy with it.

Pros:

The neck feels very thin and light: easy to play.

Bass is lightweight: My back and shoulders are happy.

Active electronics can be turned off. This is good, since I don't need the active eq.

Cons:

The thin neck is not very stable while playing, as it resonates quite a bit when low notes are played (the lowest octave of standard 5-srting tuning).

The body contour is not ideal for resting my right arm.

The metal hardware (bridge, tuners) feel a bit flimsy. But they have been ok so far. One tuner (A) felt quite stuck, but mineral oil spray fixed this.

The fingerboard wood is way too soft for roundwound strings, and this will result in heavy grooves on the fingerboard where strings contact wood. I ended up coating the fingerboard with super glue (cyanoacrylate). This was quite laborious, but solved the problem.

My other bass, fretted, is a 2000€ Warwick. The difference in quality is noticeable, of course. But still I feel that this was a nice buy. You get what you pay for.

Update after a couple of years:

Two tuners out of five have failed by now. First the tuner hardware started to fee stiff, then the mechanism just broke. The bass is not usable now, before I get a new set of tuner hw.

Also, the thin metal chassis of the monorail bridge hardware parts is showing signs of fatigue, and it is starting to bend.

Therefore I lower my quality rating to 2 stars.

5-String Fretless Bass

Plain and simple in appearance, but well constructed. The neck and fretless board are particularly well made. The tuners work well, the electrics are adequate, but not spectacular. My only concern is the bridge, which at first glance looks attractive, but is not solid enough and so causes rather unsympathetic vibrations (a slight rattling). This i believe is due to it's "5-piece" design. I should be able to fix this, if not i will have to replace the bridge. Over all a good instrument, if a little plain!!

Very little to fret about!

A well made fretless 5 string bass guitar and excellent value for money. Well balanced. You have the choice of an active or passive pick-up system operated via the pull-push action of the volume control. This is very convenient because the only grouse I have is that it eats batteries at an alarming rate. I now only insert the battery prior to playing. Only the issue with battery durability stops me giving it full marks