Harley Benton MV-4PJ Gotoh BM 4-stars Reviews

Good but you might need to do some work

I really like this instrument. For 230€ this is almost a crime. It is generally built quite well. Especially these made in Japan mechanics are great. But man, some of the finish on the body is not optimal. Parts of it are cracked. But this does not really bother me. It might bother you tho. It was really annoying to remove the plastic wraps from the pick guard but in the end I got it off. I find that the pickguard looks really good, especially the 3 layer construction. I found that the thumb rest is a bit annoying at first. Removing it proved a challenge tho as the factory assembled it so neatly that when I got it of the pickguard looked awful so I put it back on. I found that the control scheme of the buttons is a bit hard to grasp. I am not sure but I believe the first 2 Knobs control the volume of the pickups and the last small knob controls the overall tone. You sadly don't get a small card explaining what was going on.

The really bad stuff:

The Setup was god awful. I can't imagine it would have gotten thru QA with this so I blame it on the weather (it was really cold for the past few weeks and I believe that might have warped the neck a tiny bit).

The guitar had a bit of backbow when I got it but that was easily fixed thru adjustment of the trustrod. If you are not experienced doing this I recommend finding someone that knows what they are doing.

I also found that the intonation and the playing action were both off by a bit.

The intonation was quite weird, before I adjusted the neck that is. Afterwards I intonated it myself with absolutely no issues (Gotoh stuff is great). The issue with the action was that even after fixing the bow the strings would sound like it was a sitar. To be fair it sounded really cool and I played around with a lot of gain and distortion. But in the end I rembered that I bought a bass and fixed it. Now it plays great.

Speaking of playing: This thing plays great. I love the neck shape. I find it is quite a lot more comfortable than my other Harley Benton Bass (A Prog B450). Soloing is great fun and walking is too. I personally don't like that the nut is quite low but this makes it great for beginners. It is easy to reach everything and play slap and pop. I would only love if they had the 21st fret. I don't know why people complain about the weight of this thing I find it is quite normal. It is well balanced and playing it while sitting is quite comfortable

This guitar is a real bargain for the price tho you might need to do a lot of work and might not be up to the highest standards. But I would argue that you can shoot this thing out against stuff that costs 4 times as much and still sound great.