Harley Benton JJ-55OP Natural 4-stars Reviews

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.

decent

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