Harley Benton JJ-55OP Natural

Very solid 5 stringer

Very good bass, let's go over the pros and the cons.

PROS:

1- The build quality is superb, no sharp fret edges or anything, just a little tweak on the action and it was ready to play.

2- You adjust the truss rod with a wheel at the base of the neck, that's super convenient and the best way to adjust a truss rod in my opinion, much easier and faster than they normal headstock allen key hole.

3- The sound is great, good tones and a very good slapping tone too, the B string is very decent for a 34'' bass.

CONS:

1- Mid scoop when playing with the blend control centered, can be easily fixed moving it a bit to either side, and that's a normal occurence with jazz basses.

2- The preamp is not the best, volume is very much dependant on it, when you boost, volume goes up and viceversa. You can of course make up for it with volume on the amp or on the bass, but it's not ideal especially when playing live, I normally play with the bass a little bit higher, the treble a little bit lower and the blend a little bit more towards the bridge pickup, that gives the bass a very nice jazz tone.

3- When playing with the treble boosted, it can get noisy, the electronics cavity has only a very simple shielding paint, so a new set of hum cancelling pickups, or even a good shielding job would be great, it's not horrible and definitely playable, and that's also a normal occurence with jazz basses.

Overall, I think this bass would have benefited more from passive electronics like the JP, I kinda wish lower priced instruments would shy away from active electronics more and instead used that money on better tuners, strings, bridge, etc...

The slap tone is great, better than the JP slap tone in my opinion, so if you are a fellow slapper, you'll be happy with this. The treble can be hard to tame sometimes, even with it cut completely, not a deal breaker for me but still, if you are looking to get a bass that can mimick a precision sound, look elsewhere or mod it.

That being said, a good shielding and maybe some better preamp/passive electronics would benefit this bass. 4/5 because it's a great modding platform but of course, it is already very good as it is.

The colour on it looks great with the natural finish, removing the pickguard doesn't expose any cables or electronics so that can be done easily, the string spacing on this is 18mm, which is a little bit less than on a typical 4 string bass (19mm) but it doesn't feel too tight and you won't hurt your fingers when slapping.

Overall, great value, but if you don't value slap too much and want more versatility, consider spending +20€ on the 5 string JP model, I do think that the tones on that bass are more usable outside the box.

Unbelievable value for such a great bass. Thick, clear sound and growl. Amazing fit and finish. Just buy this instead of any bass under $600.

High quality at a low price point

I've owned multiple 5-string basses, none of which I was able to fall in love with. I decided to order the Harley Benton JJ-55OP as a last chance at finding the right 5-string bass for me. Upon arrival, the bass was perfectly set-up and in tune. No adjustments needed whatsoever! Plays like a dream, and I prefer to play it over my fender jazz bass. You can't beat the quality of this instrument at this price point!

decent

The pick ups are a bit noisy and don't kick as much but generally it is a good value bass

Very, very good.

Build quality is very good. No issues whatsoever. Quite impressive, in fact. Not the lightest bass at 9.8 lbs, but not unusual for a 5 string bass. It balances very well, and with a nice strap (I use a wide padded strap by Lekato) it doesn't feel heavy.

The neck is wide and shallow, with 18.5mm string spacing at the bridge, it reminds me a lot of the Lakland 5502 I used to have. Very comfortable.

The electronics is where it could improve. It's perfectly usable as it is, let's make that clear. Hey, I got it only a few days ago and I just did a recording session with it, stock. I was playing reggae, with a foam mute at the bridge and the treble EQ all the way down. That sounded very good, using the neck pickup alone, but if I wanted a fuller range sound I'd notice the single coil hum characteristic of Jazz bass pickups. The good news is it can be tamed easily, because... there's zero shielding. So that's something that will be done as soon as I get my hands on some copper tape to shield the control cavity. No big deal, it'll cost under a tenner and will take me all of 15-20 minutes at most. Again, when facing small issues like that I look at the price tag: it's ok.

The pickups sound fine, but nothing amazing. Again, they're perfectly useable. I would prefer something a bit hotter and humbucking, more like a Model J type pickup, but the stock pickups are just fine.

The 2-band EQ preamp surprised me positively. I'm used to finding very poor preamps on instruments in this price range, but this one again seems pretty decent. The bass centre frequency is a bit lower than I'd prefer (that's me with 90% of the preamps out there, 'though), it sounds like it's centered around 40 Hz, which is very common, I just prefer a bit higher, 60-80 Hz ideally. The treble is lower than usual, which is great! It's actually very useful and musical. Often they're so high that they just remove finger string noise and little more (so many are centered at 10 KHz, which is way too high I think). This one seems to get into the high mids territory, which is good.

So... features, 4, just because it doesn't have a preamp bypass switch, but that's not exactly a problem.

Sound? Another 4. It sounds good. I'd prefer a different pickup, but the stock ones are decent enough.

Quality, another 4, just because of the lack of shielding.

But overall I give it a 5, because it's good to go as is, it is very well made, it feels good, it sounds good, and remind me... how much is it??? Incredible value.