Harley Benton MM-84A SB Deluxe Series Reviews

Excellent

Love this bass. A bit tricky for slap as neck pick up in the way but I got used to it and really love this bass

Powerful Possibilities

I have several basses Marcus Miller, Fender and this one is surprisingly unique in its delivery character. For the price it is beyond its weight in gold. Fantastic lows and the mids are sweet. I don't care to much for treble high tone on any bass. I love it

Meh

This bass has a lot going for it, but the frets were most uneven, and the edges were sharp. I'm having to level and crown the frets and dress those edges. I expected to set the intonation and action; I didn't expect to deal with extensive fret problems

Great Sound And Quality

I own a Sterling Ray 34 bass And Harley Benton MM-84A SB Deluxe I own very comparable and much lighter in weight .

Like multiple basses in one

Wow...Superb finish and great looks at first glance but when I plugged into my amp I knew I had everything I needed from a bass…MM-84A is a beast! Wow! If I could give it one more star I would...Well, here we go! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Obscene Bass

For what it cost i cannot find a single fault, even if it cost 4 times as much.

Superb quality and build, finish... what a neck, fretwork perfect.

And yes it has the Stingray Growl.

Buy one now.

Great value and feel of the bass.

I love this bass. The quality is there and amazing sound. Even though it has a bit less in money, it’s totally worth it.

Great bass - awesome value for money

Well, my Harley Benton MM-84A SB Deluxe just arrived - took exactly a week from Germany to the UK.

First impressions; it was tuned down a whole step - that's fine. Tuned up, some buzz on all strings. Adjusted truss rod and all OK now.

No sharp fret ends - not rounded nicely, but certainly not bad at all.

Tuners are nice to turn. Thought it would have more meat to the output - then again, I'm using it through an interface into Ampeg SVT Suite v1.10 and put through monitors.

Controls are nice and smooth - stiff with the half way notch so you know when the Bass, Treble and Mid are at the mid points.

Pickup selector is smooth too.

Pretty impressed considering it was £155 delivered.

You may need to do some tweaking.

I received my Harley Benton MM-84A SB Deluxe Series two days ago so here are my initial thoughts. First of all the thing looks superb. The maple fretboard is a nice touch and has no sharp frets. The action was way too high for me so I had to do a little tweaking of the bridge saddles and truss rod to get it set up to my liking. This wasn't much of an issue and they even supply the correct tools for the job in the box. Then I plugged it in and that's where the disappointment started. Firstly the jack plug wasn't connecting properly. I had to pull the jack out by a couple of millimeters to make a good connection. Secondly, the selector switch crackled and cut out the sound every time I touched it. So I removed the covers and cleaned everything out and it seems to have done the trick. I'm still not sure that the jack plug is 100% but it's easier for me to install a new one than send the bass back. The only other issue is that the pickups on this thing are red hot. The amount of output is extreme even with the -15db switch pressed on my amp. To remedy this I had to wind the pickups down until they were almost level with the body. But having said all that, once the bass was set up properly this thing sings and has an excellent range of tones. So in summation, an excellent instrument at an absolutely unbelievable price, but you may have to do some work to get it how you want it.

Excellent Bass

I wanted a second bass and since I have a jazz I went with this EB style bass and am very happy with it. It plays very well out of the box. I love all the different sounds I can get out of it with the double humbuckers that have split coil options and the 3 band eq. Very good action out of the box too and the fretwork and rolled edges on the neck are awesome!! I am very happy with this bass and highly recommend it.

Great for the price - but mine has 2 dead spots on the neck

Great sound, tonal variation, and comfort. It's designed and built well, considering the price. The pickups and circuit provide very rich tones. The 2-octave fingerboard is a nice rarity for Stingrays. The hardware is not at all top level, but it does the job.

One problem: there are dead spots on the fingerboard at the second and third frets, only on the E string. The notes there fade out quickly. That's the reason for my 3-star rating for quality.

Unbelievable!

Faultless cosmetically and looks better in the flesh (wood) than in the photos.

There is some minor wood loss under the fretboard at the 24th fret on the E string - doesn't affect playability and how often does a bass player use the 24th fret on the E string anyway?

Electronically sound i.e. the 3-band EQ works and works well and the selector switch does a nice job of selecting neck humbucker, bridge humbucker and both humbuckers and the inbetween single coil settings - little or no noise on the single coil options on mine but you expect some noise with single coil settings.

Neck is chunky but I like it and the maple wood is nicely grained. Quite a bit of neck relief as supplied but I like that - I just lowered the string action to get it where I want it. Intonation is excellent as supplied.

Fantastic bass for the price paid - £149 - and I simply do not know how this is made and sold at this price?

Very beefy punchy sound in most settings and suits metal and rock best but this thing can be adapted to most genres of music.

My minor technical niggle is that it is active only - you cannot get output without a healthy 9V battery installed - it would of been nice to have a passive option but I'm nit picking a bit on this fact.

Great bass!

Unbeatable for the price.

My only minor gripe is that the nut-slot is a bit wider than the nut; but it does not adversely affect playability in any way and hey, let's be realistic here...

This thing is a beast!

I have had this for a few weeks now and I am loving it. This is no cheap garbage bass, it looks amazing, the neck feels amazing, and it sounds awesome. This is a high output bass. The only thing that I found wrong with it was the wiring on the selector switch. When I first received it, ( 3 days from Germany to PA, US) the selector switch was making some crackling noises and not all of the pickups were working. I removed the back cover and found a few strands of wiring shorting out some contacts. I simply pushed the strands back to the contacts that they belonged to and eliminated the issues. Someone didn't quite get all of the strands soldered onto the contacts. For the price that I paid for this bass, and as completely blown away as I am with it, I was fully prepared to go as far as buying a new switch and installing it myself in needed. Turns out is was a simple fix and the thing is rocking now. Would I still buy it, knowing what I know now? I definitely would. I definitely recommend this and if this is the style of bass that you are looking for, don't hesitate to order one.

Outstanding Product Quality

This bass guitar is an awesome play sounding, awesome playing and awesome looking bass guitar. This bass guitar was manufactured with outstanding product quality.

Great for the money

Bass arrived well packaged as usual. No damage and after a tune up, it was playable straight out of the box (after putting a 9v battery in for the active!!)

Very comfortable neck profile (for me anyway) and the bass balances nicely on a strap. Really good range of tones. After a few days, I lowered the action slightly and adjusted the intonation on the E and A strings once the bass had acclimatised to the house.

Really happy with the bass. Easy to forget just how inexpensive it is. Yes, you could nit pick at some aspects like quality of hardware but for this much money, I really have no complaints. And it’s a looker too!!

Recommended

Fantastic specs and value

I bought this having seen the positive reviews and wanted to add to them. I've rated this bass at 5 stars for features, sound quality and overall. Having said that, there are a couple of very minor niggles, but I don't think they're enough to lose a star.

The guitar was pretty well set up out of the box. The neck relief didn't need any adjustment, the only tweaks I made were to set the intonation and lift the middle strings slightly to match the curvature of the fretboard. I lowered the height of the pickups as they were a bit high for my liking. All very minor stuff, most of it personal preference.

I changed the strings to D'Addario flatwound chromes, as they're my preferred strings so I can't comment on the quality of the supplied strings, other than to say they looked fine.

The sound range you can get from this bass is great! I wanted something with the flexibility to get a post-punk-gothy-alternative sound and this is perfect. The three band EQ, combined with the pickup switching gives me just what I wanted. I could imagine using the split-coil settings with a bit of drive to get a nice bluesy rumble or tame things down a bit for some nice funk bass. Nice and versatile.

The finish was pretty good out of the box. No sharp frets, the body looks fine, no problems with the headstock and all of the hardware looks OK. One minor grumble is that the tuners feel a little bit cheap. They have a flimsy feel to them. Having said that they're holding tune very well and as I mentioned it's not enough for me to knock a star off.

One other thing to mention is that the jack socket on my bass is quite stiff and has occasional connection problems. Nothing major and I will probably have a proper look at it when I get a moment to take it apart. Nothing really too major but worth making a note of in case you're not comfortable doing some basic maintenance. Again, this isn't serious enough to warrant marking down.

One final thing to mention is that I didn't get a battery in the box with this guitar, so do make sure you've got a spare 9v to use. That might have been something to do with new Brexit red tape.

For the money...great

For the price of this guitar you can't beat it. Very playable and lots of options for tone. Nice looking and feels like quality in the hands. Lows are slightly lacking but nice crisp mid tones . Just bought my daughter a Harley Benton guitar for Christmas.

Quality on a budget

Pros:

Sweet, punchy, rich humbucky tones of a Stingray variety on a ridiculously small budget. Real variety of sounds possible with the 3-band EQ. Neck is a joy to play.

Cons:

Hardware feels a bit cheap so may upgrade the pots, but honestly spending £30 or so on such cosmetics is preferable to forking out £1500 or so more for something like this with a fancy name on the headstock.

Source of inspiration

My today experience is not rich yet, I am playing the instrument only about a month, but for today I have only positive impressions about it and I am really fond of playing it. It sounds great and all the functions are on their positions. Of course there are some negligible defects related to the plastic elements production (on the nut), but nevermind. The maple neck looks really beautiful and it is set up well. Pickups are a bit noisy in some positions, but maybe it is related also to the used amp. It is not a problem for me, as I fond of imperfections, so also maybe it is because of my style ;)