Harley Benton HBZ-2005 Deluxe Series Reviews

Beautiful instrument - fun to play

This bass is absolutely beautiful. It's a piece of art, especially for the price. Crazy The sounds are good, assuming that you're looking for that active Jazz tone. If that's your thing, then you're going to really like this. I'm usually more of a passive P-bass player, so this is great to give me something different. I chose to string this one with Elixirs and a high C to give me some better soloing options for when playing in a duo with an acoustic guitar, and I really like what I'm getting. I can see where one might want to change out the pickups, and I might look at that at some point, but I'm also struggling to find pickups which fit this 5 string configuration. It's not a big deal, but it could see where swapping out electronics could take this bass from good to great.

Amazing bass at an affordable price

This bass is fantastic. The neck is fast, and there's no B-string sag! The pickups sound great on their own, and when distortion is applied (Sansamp Bass Driver).

My only complaint is that I would've liked it to be string-through. The bridge is already setup for a string-through setup, but there were no holes in the body. I just personally prefer the tension of a string-through body.

Great Bass

Great cheap bass, only issue is one of the knobs being a little finicky. Other than that it sounds great.

Ok but not good enough.

I just did not like the feel. I could see that I would have ended up doing what I do with most Harley Benton guitars that I do not send back. That is replace tuners pups and all electrics, but only if I get a quality build. This was an OK bass but just not worth the upgrades for me.

Best value for my money

There's nothing not to like about this bass. At this price point I'm not sure you can get anything better.

Very good for the price

There is very little to complain about. The design is beautiful and in general it's very comfortable to play, especially for the price. The only "issue" I've noticed is a small bit of wood that bulges out a touch at the top of the neck, most likely due to the sanding process, but you don't notice it while playing. Overall, a gorgeous instrument that plays really well for its price.

High quality great price

So cheap considering instruments here in egypt and the quality is amazing!

Pleasantly surprised - great value for the price

I bought this bass over 10 years ago as my second 5 string bass and didn't regret it. I wanted a wooden natural looking neck thru body instrument to replace my old 4 string EKO/Camac (now quite rare) bass so I could move to the 5 string world with something I would also love aesthetically, and it ended up one of my best purchases in a long time.

It arrived in a cheap but well packed cardboard box; both string action and bridge were finely adjusted and all it needed to start playing was tuning the strings. The sound is clean and the electronics is versatile and quiet. Pots and knobs feel a bit cheap but they do their job and in many years they never crackled, however I usually don't make heavy use of them during play, so YMMV; tuning pegs work as expected and don't miss tuning even after over an hour of heavy playing.

Would I purchase it again? Yes, definitely, although the +50% price bump from back then could make it less appealing for others.

wow.

how do they make these so cheap. such great workmanship. would happy play one all day long. and I do

and I am

Good but a little too heavy

I like the sound and everything is on stock settings. A little noise when switching between pickups. On stock its silent.

Its heavy. I wish it was lighter.

Nice for the price, but...

Just terrible fret ends!

Great bass for a great price!

First impression was that I couldn't believe how good this bass looked. The wood it is made of is amazing. At band practice everyone loved how it looked. The bass plays amazingly well. Very easy to play and it was set up great from the factory. The sound is killer and compares to my $1000 Ibanez bass. Crazy good!!!

Amazing for the price.

Got a little grounding issue that had a little fixing but it travelled through countries so it's fine. Plays smooth. Some rough frets but nothing too bad

The bass is generally quite good.

The bass is generally quite good. For some reason, I came with a completely loosened anchor rod, so I had to tinker, removing the ringing of the strings on the frets. But as a result, I replaced the upper threshold, then the situation stabilized.

Suprisingly good!

Bought this as cheap five string bass to do some composing etc at home with tiny amp. The sound was suprisingly good (was little skeptic of the demo audios on the product page) and the quality feels overall solid.

Cant really tell is this good for actual bass player but as long time guitar player this was money's worth to have at home for quick bass needs.

Convenient, but not perfect

The guitar has good playability and a serious appearance. The sound is average, it lacks character, but it is calm and you can work with it. I found 3-4 cosmetic flaws, notches, glue, dent, but generally nothing serious. The bass is worth the money and is suitable for home lessons and recordings. The guitar was rebuilt as always very cool.

This is seriously greate guitar

Well... This bass sound pretty good. Very tasty, most bright and fat sound what i heard.

My current bass - J&D Jazz Bass with official Fender pickups.

If i compare them with each other...

On Harley Benton The neck feels much thicker. But i can't say: that is bad. This is strange for start and not habitually.

I play Metal mostly. And for really heavy music HBZ-2005 fits very well here.

Dead note

I honestly don't get it. This is the second one I try, as I've sent the first one back because of a dead note. Lo and behold, the replacement one has the same exact, unacceptable, problem. The note at the 7th fret on the G string just doesn't ring, and I don't mean "it rings a little less", it doesn't ring period. As is it's unusable; also it's unfixable, since it's a neck through (which should help avoiding this kind of problem) and their "coin on the headstock" trick does nothing.

Twice in a row is bad, trust me, it's not bad luck: it's bad engineering.

Sounds good, looks good

It has a clear sound, plays pretty well and it has a killer look.

Now, it's not perfect, the frets ends were very sharp and scratched my skin whenever i played. Had to file them quite a lot.

The controls are a bit weird, not the most intuitive layout.

The bridge looks awesome, but some of the couldn't be lowered.

On the neck, you could feel with your fingers where the wood stripes are glued together.

However, with 30 minutes of setup, filing the frets, oiling the fretboard, setting the truss rod... etc, you get a very good looking and very good sounding bass.

Amazing bass

I bought this bass because I was learning and I did not know if I would get serious or not. Now I'm transitioning to a more "pro" bass and I cannot find much difference between the basses I've tried and my HB.