Harley Benton Enhanced MJ-5MN Natural Reviews

The ultimate budget bass

The guitar is very well built and plays excellent. The active and passive options, coil split on the bridge pickup, and built-in EQ make this guitar useful for practically everything. I've used it on jazz, rock, metal and pop projects and it always delivered. The fretboard plays like butter and the extra string isn't too clunky. Be prepared to train some back muscles tho, as it is a very heavy instrument.

Professional grade instrument

It's my number 1 bass right now. Everything feels right and expensive about this guitar. No issues so far, I like the tone and versatility, tuners are right, needed some adjustment of the truss rod (also to point out that trust rod is nicely placed and easy to work). Very good product.

Love it!!!

It is a Jazz Bass with a bunch of options for a great price. Arrived to the USA in perfect condition. Gig ready out the box!!

Good value for money

This is positioned as a top bass in HB line, and features are good. The sound is fine too, but has a bit lack of hi end.

I wanted to use it as a backup instrument however there are few things which led me to solve it finally. First is pickup noise, even on single humbucker position it's clearly audible. Second is weight, it's really heavy to carry on for a few hours gig.

Enhanced MJ-5MN

As with any Harley Benton, it’s easy to forget how cheap they are. The bass arrived well packaged and was playable straight away after tuning. No adjustments required.

Initial thoughts are that this is a very good bass for the price. My only complaints about the bass are 1) I dislike the colour of the headstock face and back of the neck as it’s a weird yellow and doesn’t suit the body colour. 2) I was disappointed with the cheap feel of the pots and control knobs and will probably get these changed. 3) The headstock kind of looks over sized. Apart from these minor issues (2 being personnel preference) I would recommend this bass for those of us on a budget.

Destroys the Competition

Wow, first off I work as a repair technician for a major retailer of musical instruments in the USA, So I get to try and do work on a lot of different instruments at different price points. All I can say is, this does not feel like it cost less than $400, It can easily compete with basses at the $1k pricepoint. Finish and quality is impeccable, Sound i punchy and articulate. The preamp does get noisy when boosting the treble a lot, and I would of preferred a hi mid control instead of a treble. But That's something most people upgrade on basses at this price point. You Can't go wrong with this bass, buy it now! and maybe buy a second one!

diamond in the rough, bass with potential, but some quality (control) issues

pro's

- good hardware, nice smooth tuners, bridge, preamp is quiet except when boosting treble a lot

- preamp is actually the roswell gmp3, so room to mod without buying a different preamp :-)

- nearly impossible to see the body is made up of multiple wood pieces

- balance is rather good, no head-dive

- conductive paint in control cavity

- very versatile regarding sound (nice jazz sound in passive/coil split mode, growl with just the humbucker, very full bodied sound with jazz neck together with Humbucker)

con's

- bass and treble controls were reversed from what i'm used to (order of pots: volume, balance, bass, treble). however, upon inspection of the preamp, it seems the pots were connected the wrong way around on the preamp board, as the pot that was acting as bass had a sticker ' treble' on it; simple switch around of the connectors fixed this.

- nut not seated properly causing the B string to float above the 0-fret

- jack socket very poor, needs replacement directly as it keeps coming loose by plugging/unplugging cable (bad thread)

neutral

- the block inlays aren't actually inlays but rather it seems some kind of epoxy was poured in, which seams to have shrunken slightly, so you can feel the blocks a bit. doesn't affect playability.

- neck-body joint is OK-ish, not a perfect fit, but no big gaps either.

- balance pot is not very fine-tuned, all control-room is VERY close to the centre-detent, so if you like a typical jazz 70% neck 100% bridge sound, that takes some practice to dial in (perhaps the wrong type potmeter taper was used?)

all in all, compared to the HB JB75 i also own, i think the hardware justifies the price bump, and the problems found i personally can fix, but i must say i was expecting better quality control on a E400,- bass. (the similarly priced marcus miller/sire V3-5 has much nicer finish)