Harley Benton Enhanced MP-4EB Lake Blue Reviews

All around great bass

The bass arrived quickly with no damage. It was completely playable out of the box, just a little tuning was needed. The next was straight as needed and the intonation was basically dead on. Switching between active and passive gives you a lot of tonal options, both sound good when playing alone. Oh, and it looks great! Hard to believe, but it does look better in person!

Good for the price

Not a bassist, just a guitarist who wanted to have a bass to record simple bass lines.

I think that this bass is great for the price.

The only think I'm not convinced with is the back of the neck. Feels a bit rough.

I think I'll end up applying some kind of oil to see if it feels better.

Almost perfect

So I went in with pretty high expectations of this bass - I'd seen a lot of glowing reviews, and not much negativity. I was mentally preparing myself to be let down as I know this kind of thing can be a dice roll at times, but I was pleasantly surprised to see this bass come out near perfect. The only minor gripe is there are some crusty marks on the binding at the end of the fretboard, but other than that, the fit and finish was perfect. Super low action, truss rod was adjusted nicely, strings felt fresh enough, and it is super effortless to play. Top marks!

First dissapointed, then happy.

I got a flawed instrument, where the pickups and bridge was not aligned.

So i had to change the pickups to inlined magnet ones to fix the alignment with the strings. Because of the stringthru body i could not move the bridge, witch had been an easy fix.

Bought EMG P and EMG MMTW. And now i have a bass that is nice to play, and sounds awesome. The MMTW pickup can be used as both a single and a humbucker. And together with the P pickup, i now have 3 different sounding options that can be blended together. The EMGs are better than the stock ones. Because i was unfortunate to buy a flawed bass, the shop gave me a 35€ cut in the price, witch was to little. But i did not want to ship back the bass, so i took it. The new pickups had a price that made the bass more expensive, but the end product after the upgrade fix, is good.

It's a heavy bass. And i guess the weight, build materials, string thru body, high mass bridge and quality pickups makes the big sound it has. I took out the stock pre amp, and used the pots and wires that came with the EMGs.

The stock pre amp ain't bad, so i will use it in my Ibanez gio200 wich has a bad stock pre amp.

After the upgrade fix, i am now happy with this beautiful bass. It is very nice looking, and you can se the quality parts and work witch has made this a bass build like a much more expensive one.

And i find it an easy bass to play, much because of it's nice slim neck.

This is my first bass

And I love it. Everything came beautifully setup, needed a slight tune but seems to be holding it pretty well. Neck, frets and body flawless. The range of sounds is truly impressive but I’m still experimenting with a practise amp. I am a bit nervous of the passive/active push/pull and need to get used to it - scared of relying on the active and the battery dying on me. Be nice to have the controls labelled, even just with stickers when new. But truly amazing value.

Great bass, except...

...the string spacing is really out of whack. The G string is very close to the edge of the fret board and the E has plenty space to spare, and the gap between the E and the A is much larger than between the other strings. Not bad enough for me to send it back (too much hassle from Norway, but if I had bought it locally I would have). I will have to get a new nut for sure. Since this is supposed to be an "enhanced" instrument, I'm a bit disappointed.

In all other respects it's a great bass for the price, but HB needs to pay attention to the small, but important details.

Sexy

I am very satisfied with this purchase. The color, fit and finish are so good I can only say it's sexy. Sound is great. All I did was tune it and it's playing great with no frustrating set up needed.

Great bass

If there is one bass in this price range I would have to recommend to anyone, is HB enhanced, version with Precision pickups. Good sound, very comfortable to play. Narrow neck, smooth on the back. Tuners and pots are quite nice as well. I love through body bridge. 0 fret and yes, all frets are stainless steel. Bass resonates very well, and it’s actually not heavy at all. I highly recommend it.

As you may expect, there need to be some compromises - finish or binding is not always perfect, however it’s still nothing serious - just a minor details that I needed to mention.

Good base with some drawbacks

Nice bass with a great sound. The P pickup sound decent, and this is the only one I used so far. Not a big fan of the bridge one. The wood is very resonant and sustains pretty good. Some drawbacks consist of manufacturing errors. The bridge was mounted 1 centimeter above the center and so was crooked and strings didn't align with the pickup pole pieces. The electronics are a bit iffy, but provide nice options for this price range. The neck is extremely nice and the binding is actually nicely executed. The color is a bit too blue for my liking (like extremely saturated), also the perloid pickguard is driving me insane and does not really fit imo. I have written to customer service in hoping I could get a replacement black pickguard, like on the natural version, and await response.

Budget Friendly Top Quality Bass

I saw this bass and was attracted by its look at first. I then checked the specs and could not believe what a great bass this seemed to be. I checked some reviews out and decided to get it. It will be my back up and practice bass. The Roswell picks ups are excellent sounding and wide ranged with a versatile selection of sounds from the split coil and humbucker. The hardware is excellent quality for the money and the bound neck feels fantastic. Only negatives are that the bass is a little on the heavier side and the scratch plate was a little roughly cut around the top curve but to be honest, this is a minor issue and can easily be sanded flush.

A mixed bag

This one went back because of a slightly misaligned bridge. Other impressions:

Beautiful looks (maybe apart from the huge headstock if you ask me).

Chunky neck made of lovely maple with a soft feel. It felt great to me apart from several sharp fret ends. These need attention and the frets need a polish as well. On the positive side the stainless frets were level and the neck was straight (which is after all more important). Strings came with a very high action but I was able to adjust them down to a more playable level without any buzz. I also like the zero fret which is a rare feature especially in this price range.

This bass is fairly heavy for a 4-string. Ergonomics and balance is good though.

The push pull volume knob had a lot of play (a dead zone) which made it feel cheap. I didn't play the bass enough to make a final judgement on the pickups and preamp but I'm pretty sure that the pots and preamp would have been replaced soon if I had kept it. Not sure about the pickups, they might be fine.

All in all it's a nice looking bass with some premium features but in this case it was let down by poor fit and finish in some areas. I personally don't mind giving the frets some love on bass in this price range but a misaligned bridge and inaccurately drilled string holes underneath it would be too much of a hassle to make perfect. It wasn't so bad that it influenced playability much but I like my strings to align nicely with the neck and the pole pieces of the pickups. They didn't on this sample.

In the end I decided not to have it replaced with an identic model since a perfect one would still be slightly heavier than I prefer and it would likely also require some mods to the electronics to make me 100% happy. If you can live with that it's a lot of bass for the money though. Just cross your fingers and hope that you get a good one since the finish and quality control does not seem to be better here compared to Harley Benton's cheaper models.

A surprise, but a very welcome one.

I ordered this bass because I needed another bass for alternative tunings (mainly guitarist) and this was both very affordable and very well spec'd. I've gone through many basses before and each one was missing that punch or were missing the body I like in my bass tones . The second I plugged this bad boi into my rig, it proceeded to beat the wrath of God into my gut. It is now my main bass and has its own personality in my mixes that demands its own pocket of space.

Each note is a force to be reckoned with. In the "both pickups" position, it is simultaneously snappy and beefy, filling in any sonic space it needs to and makes every note clear and concise.

The only bad thing that I found with mine is that the G string was set up just a tad low, so I raised it up a bit. Other than that, everything was perfect.

If you need an all-rounder that can fill any role a bass needs to, get this one. I will more than gladly get another or the 5-string version.

Truly incredible

Truly incredible instrument for the price - upgrading the pickups would make it in every way superior to any squier or fender for twice the price

love this bass

great bass for the money super comfortable neck, easy to set up,

only issue i had was the output jack was kind of wonky,they used a plastic stereo jack, had to order a larger eletrosocket jack plate replaced with a puretone jack and now its a tank

outstanding bass in this price range

This bass is worth taking a serious look at. I am a semi-pro bassist for 40 years, have a ridiculous number of basses in all price ranges and am super impressed with this model. When unboxed, I found no flaws of any kind. The neck and fretwork is first rate. Nice and thin , and needed only minor tweaking to get the action down to my liking. The pickups are dead quiet in either position. I love the fact it has a blend pot, rather than a switch. The rear pickup is bright and kind of nasal sounding, like Bartolinis. The split P bass P/U is very full and together give you lots of options tone wise. I live in Canada and you cannot get anything of this quality for this price. I am very happy with this bass and will be bringing it to all my upcoming gigs to show my fellow gearheads you don't have to spend a fortune to get a quality built , great sounding and looking bass.