Harley Benton Kahuna CLU-Bass Ukulele Reviews

Value for money is awesome!

Comes with a nice pickup and a built in tuner. Sounds very nice, lightweight. Low end is a bit lacking, at least when I compare it to other brands, but there is still plenty to enjoy. Its not a tiny Ukulele, its the size of a 1/2 guitar, which means that its easier to play than a standard Ukulele. It also works well with special nylon core strings such as GoldTone Silverback (do NOT use standard acoustic bass strings on this!) which makes it sound very close to standard acoustic bass. All in all, its great value for money, and I'm very happy with it.

Great for learning

I think this would be a great instrument for learning the bass. It's very easy on the fingers! I'm not a bassist and my ears are wood, so I don't want to comment on the sound too much, except that I think it sounds nice, acoustic or amplified.

Value for Money

I'm a bass player and I bought this to use "on the spot" just to have fun and practice songs without going thru the hassle cables etc. It's been a few weeks now and as a summary I enjoy playing it. It feels a bit weird with the strings first, especially the E and A strings' feeling is very different and sliding is not comfortable. Also I have to tune it every now and then, thanks to the built in tuner it's easier than usual. Overall the sound is OK. Also when plugged into amp it sounds nice. Obviously it's not top quality sound but delivers what is expected. I don't regret buying it and I would recommend anyone that has the same intentions.

Can’t put it down!

This is a great instrument, It’s the only bass small enough to keep it in the living room, it’s really quiet so I use it to jam along with whatever TV programs the wife is watching, TV doesn’t interest me otherwise! It stays in tune pretty well and I can get a TON of tones out of it! Everything from dbl bass flubber to Jazz honk. Really fun to play and sounds good plugged in too, in fact I’m going to record some live backing tracks with it for a pub gig. The small scale does take some adjustment & getting used to, but I totally recommend it, great fun!

Great little bass

Love this thing, easy to play (for a guitar player), good sound (sounds a lot like an upright bass). Silicone strings need a little time to get used to but once you get the hang of it, it’s fine. Included pickup and tuner is definitely a plus.

Issues with fret-buzz

Before ordering this bass I played the fretless version. I loved the sound, the vibe and concept of the bass! I didn't want fretless though as I wanted to be able to play without looking at the fretboard.

The bass played and sounded great on the top 2 strings, but on the bottom 2 strings had bad fret buzz beyond the first few frets. I wound off the truss rod all the way and it didn't improve the situation.

Bit confused why no-one else seemed to report the fret-buzz issue so perhaps mine had some kind of flaw, but looking at the bass it seemed fine.

I would say get the fretless or look at something a bit higher quality.

Fun

Always fancied one of these just to pick up and noodle on in the garden or on my lunch break,it took quite a bit of setting up,adjusting the truss rod and ended up having to raise the nut a bit,eventually got it acceptable.very weird to play at first but after a while you adapt and it really is great fun to play,plugged in it does a great upright impersonation.I’m looking to replace the tuners (very cheap and un feasibly heavy) im sure there’s much better bass ukes out there but they’re 4/5 times the price of this one,if you’re handy at setting up I’d recommend if not they could be incredibly frustrating.

I have not expected excellent bass sound from small body instrument. I like it a lot

Fun toy - Might not quite hit all the marks

Big Jacob Collier fan here - His Kala U-Bass playing always strikes me as awe-inspiring. What a fun, cool instrument. For a fraction of the price, this Harley Benton gets close... In recording scenarios, I have to do a little bit of extra work on the back end to get it to intonate well (AKA autotune... It works!), and there's a couple spots where certain frets are mis-leveled causing the wrong note to sound. But the electronics sound quite nice and for the most part, achieve that thuddy upright-y sound. I'm keeping it just because it's also fun to play, and for a little over $100... who can complain!

Love it!

Pro’s:

*portability & sound is brilliant!

* quiet while unplugged makes practicing at any hour of the night great :)

* Price for what u get!

Cons:

* tuning & keeping the strings in tune can be a pain but I have yet to look into upgrading the strings.

Overall happy customer :)

Top Quality Portable & Travel Bass.

This little bass has a BIG sound using the Aquila poly strings which were fitted when arrived or the Kala Flats or even the Flat Black Nylon strings (though found the latter better or Fretless model). On several busking sessions folk came up & were convinced they heard an upright bass until they saw what I wash playing! Love it to bits!

Not amazed.

These are rubber strings, so don't expect it to give it a metal sound. This also is far from a double bass sound. It's something of its own.

The sounds of the demo are accurate, but having played it for a while, I think that i should have picked either an electric bass or the fretless version of this. I thought I would get more double bass vibes with this one, but if that's your objective go with the fretless one. The amp kills most of the interesting tone, so I prefer to play it unplugged, even being a very quiet sound. Better have a good mic to catch the sound if you're going this way, though.

It's hard to get a clean and prety sound from this one.

Great for its price!

Really fun lil' instrument! The sound is pretty good and the quality is decent too! I've had it for a few weeks now and it's great fun to play around with. It has a nice, unique sound that works well in many scenarios, whether amplified or not.

The tuner is pretty convenient too!

Excellent for the money!

Excellent for the money!

Basically unusable

I tend to avoid brands like Harley Benton assuming there is not much to expect in terms of quality. But then a friend of mine, a professional musician, recommended the Harley Benton American TrueTone pedal that turned out to be an amazing combination of high quality and low price. And this made me think miracles were possible. So I decided to try this little bass. I had no big illusions and was prepared to tolerate imperfections and do some extensive "tuning" on this 150-euro instrument (like levelling bumpy frets or getting rid of sharp fret ends).

Unfortunately, the bass is so miserably crappy that there is virtually nothing to improve. Build quality and sound are too bad to consider this bass seriously, even if you are buying it just to toy with.

I cannot recommend this product and suggest trying a more respectable brand, which of course will cost you at least twice as much.

Also, I have feeling that there are objective physical limits to what one can get in terms of bass sound from a short-scale instrument. Thus, I guess that my Gold Tone micro-bass whose scale is 635 mm is indeed the lower limit beyond which no decent bass is possible at all (whereas the Harley Benton has 534 mm that presumably do not suffice to reach this limit).

The best affordable U-Bass

Play it at home all the time, also took it to the rehearsal room a couple of times - was surprised how good it can sound with an amp. A couple of things could be better: 1) when played outside, it's not so loud, better take a portable amp with you 2) the 4th string sounds not as good as the other ones when unplugged - again, can be solved with an amp. The best thing about it is it's highly portable and you can take it anywhere with you easily. For this amount of money I definitely recommend this.

Good bass ukulele

If you plan to use it mostly with amp buy it, it has good pickups for the price. If you plan to use it mostly as plain acoustic instrument, you might consider some other models.

Interesting ukulele

I use it mainly for studio recording at home. It seems great, feels great, except for the A string, which seems to detune constantly. Otherwise, a great instrument with rich sound for beginners onward.

Very nice

Just amazing. for the price it's just amazing

Great U bass for the prize

I bought this bass because I wanted to test a U-bass.

For this price you can't go wrong.

the quality and sound is amazing at this price point.

The only thing I did, was change the strings tot nickel wound.

Gave the bass a little more volume and tone.

Overall an excellent bass if you don't want to spend a lot of money.