Harley Benton PJ-74 VW Vintage Series Reviews

Good for the price

First off its a great looking bass, the reason I wanted one,and for the money the build quality and everything about it is great. The neck feels great in the hand.

Only thing it looks like the pick ups have been thrown in ,I own two Squiers and the output of the Roswell pick ups is nowhere them, but all in all for £155 , I would be very happy if this was a first bass

Very Nice Bass!!!

I've had basses from almost every major producer including a 65 jazz, 70 fretless P bass and a Japanese made Fender PJ. This bass stand up well to any of them. Great quality! No sharp or high frets and almost completely intonated out of the box. The stock strings are even good. And it is very good looking. Terrific value and the bass I wish I had starting out!!!

VALUE FOR MONEY CONFIRMED!

Brilliant bass, had to go under some setup maintenance once arrived, but played beautifully, light and looked fantastic, sadly stolen from me but would buy again.

Totally Outstanding Bass

This is an unbelievable Bass for the money, superior craftmanship all around and great sound and tone, you can't go wrong with the PJ74!!

Great sound, a few flaws.

Sounds great. No issue there. This is a tone monster for being a passive bass.

Wood finish on the neck is a bit off. The skunk stripe shrunk and is not flush with the rest of the neck wood. A slight bit of fret sprout that will need to be addressed but nothing too bad. Fret ends are little sharp.

Hardware and tuners function OK. Nothing special. Quality paint finish on an alder body which is awesome at this price point. D'Addario strings too! Not no name!

Great for the price for a beginner or as a backup. A new bass player will need to know how to do a set up or know someone that can do it for them. Truly not a lot to be done but after a trip across the pond it will need some work.

This bass would be a great mod platform but is not bad as is.

Overall I'm happy to add this to the collection!

Beautifull but quality...

It's my first bass.

I love it. It is really beautfull and sounds good as I can estimate.

but there are some little problrms with quality:

Bridge mounted not acurately on its place, so strings (most of all G and D strings) are not right between magnets. On single pickup all 4 string are not ok. Frets got out a little "from the box" and little more in 3 months.

But!

I love this instrument. It inspires me to practice every day.

What more could you want?

Bass sounds great, plays great, and feels great. For the price, I have no regrets and am super happy with what I got! Setup took barely any work, slight truss rod adjustment and then lowered the action and it is a joy to play now! I don't love the bridge jazz pickup but I think I am more of a P bass person anyways, I look forward to blending a bit of the bridge pickup in to see if it grows on me.

Harley Benton PJ-74 classic!

Great bass guitar. Lightweight, very comfortable neck. Collected efficiently and beautifully. The tuners keep the tuning very well. All in all a very nice tool. The sound is rather classic, rustic. I think it's suitable for non-demanding beginner musicians.

Excellent bass for its price. Nice recording sound and feel.

Can't believe it's not a fender

Bought this bass from you about half a year ago, and as time passes I'm falling in love with it more and more. That creamy white colour is deep and beautiful, The sound is just like I've always dreamed of, that round, metallic P bass sound (with an extra option for a J bass sound, also!), I've found myself playing along with records featuring a P bass in them and sounded 100% spot on. And the build quality! Like really this is so phenomenal, one of the best I've seen on an instrument generally and especially for a HB one, and considering the price...I felt like the luckiest person when I received that bass first. Lately I've set it up with new strings and my technician (who also owns a HB bass haha) told me he was really blown away by how little he had to do for it to be ready. This is really an unbelievable instrument.

Great Bass for the price

Bought this Bass for my home studio and couldn't be happier. It plays and sounds great and looks beautiful in the cream color.

Great Bass for the buck

Great instrument for the price. It's about the same price as the cheapest Squires, but the quality of the PJ-74 is superior to the Squire. The neck and frets was 99% when I got the bass, and it only took a couple of minutes to file the few frets with sharp edges. The neck was 100% strait out of the box.

Sound is ok stock, but came to life with a set of Quarter Pound from Seymour Duncan.

With the original pickups there was a lot of hum, due to lack of shielding in the body. Quick fix with some copper tape.

Finish of body and neck is super nice.

There's a couple of minor issues :

The tuners is not very good, and will be changed in the future.

It stays in tune when tuned, but it's hard to setup because of the lack of precision of the tuners.

The nut was very ruff cut, and made of soft plastic. Already got a replacement from Graph Tech on my bench.

The neck isn't balanced to the body, and there's a good neck dive.

All in all ,I'm very pleased with this instrument, and it's now my most used bass.

Overall, an amazing instrument, well worth the money. UPDATE.

Ok, it's not a vintage Fender Precision but for the money, this bass is certainly pretty close. I bought this model on reviews I found online, with a view to modifying it.

Certainly, the tuners are not brilliant and the electronics could benefit from shielding - some copper tape will sort this out. The pickups are fine to be getting on with especially the split pickup - very gutsy. For that matter, the single coil bridge pickup is no more noisy than a Fender counterpart; single coils are noisy unless they're hum-cancelling - but, you knew that especially if you've ever owned a 'jazz' bass.

The fret job on this particular instrument is again 'ok' but there are one or two rough fret ends that slipped through QC - but, nothing that a once-over with a fret file won't sort out. I had to set the bass up - a small turn of the truss rod and adjustment on the bridge for string height - done.

The general quality of the bass is great and it 'feels' like a pricier instrument. I had returned an HB JB75 because at around 5kg, it was just too heavy although again, a superb instrument and cheaper than the one I'm reviewing. In an ideal world, I would swap the neck as I really loved the profile of the JB75's, however, this instrument has a great neck too, but the profile is obviously, 'Precision' spec. It still plays like a dream after my set up. Who knows, it may be on the mod list later on. For now, it's really the tuners that I intend to replace with Wilkinson's - cheap and efficient. I'm happy with the stock Roswell pickups - they do the job and the bass sounds great recorded.

The neck pocket is really tight and aesthetically, the bass looks great with the cream finish (off white) and red tort scratchplate - classic combination. Again, in an ideal world, I'd love this bass in fiesta red who knows, another mod?

I can't say I'm too impressed with the D'Addario EXL .045 - .100 roundwound string set either and to be honest, with the amount of grime on my fingers, I'm not entirely convinced that they're genuine but again - the strings will be replaced with ones I like.

In conclusion, the main thing here is value for money and a really useable instrument that I would happily gig. I'm not even going to hide the name on the headstock; Harley Benton are making some very good basses at least, this one and the JB75 NA, that I've played.

UPDATE - I ditched the Roswell pickups in the end and replace the neck p/up with one taken from my 90's MIJ Fender Precision and the bridge p/up from my Squier Jazz - what a difference! The original Roswell p/ups were fine but now the bass sounds even better! I also replaced the strings with some unidentified round wounds I had lying around as I wasn't keen on the D'Addario's this bass came with. I also replaced the plastic nut with a bone one and oiled the fretboard with linseed oil. Now it even smells like a much more expensive instrument (plays and sounds like one too)! I have still to replace the tuners and will probably use lightweight ones rather than the Wilkinson's I intended maybe Hipshot or similar.

Great value

Bought this to have in the home studio for laying down bass tracks, I didn't want to spend to much since im not even a bass player and just needed something "ok".

Didnt expect too much but have to say its been stellar so far. Keeps the tuning really well and no big issues except the frets being kinda sharp on the ends, but thats fixable without any big hassle.

From an experienced bass player

Uses:

Recording

Gigging (once Covid restrictions allow)

It's very, very, very good value for the price. You can gig with it.

Pros:

price (obviously)

looks

sound

weight

surprisingly good hardware and electronics

Cons:

The action was a tad high, but easily fixed.

I've been playing bass for over a decade and I've gigged a lot. I would absolutely gig with this bass. Harley Benton has made a good one with this PJ-74. I like the sound of the P and J pickups. The J is a bit faint, but an amp adjustment fixes that right up. The bass is lighter than I expected. Huge plus! The neck and fretboard feel solid and well made. No rough fret ends. The tuners are quite nice and cooperative. The only thing I would consider changing are the pickups, but even then... do I need to? I like how these Roswell pickups sound. Maybe I'll change them for fun in the future, but I am I'm happy with them now. For years, only certain brands of basses could turn my head. I'm glad I came across this PJ-74. I can't stop playing this thing. I'm very happy with it!

good value for that price

Great bass, balanced tone, records well

This bass has a solid, well-balanced tone across its whole range. Sits perfectly in the mix. Really hard to complain at this price, just as usual with any PJ bass the bridge pickup has less output than the P pickup. And the radius is flat for my tastes. I liked the bass so much that I paid more than it's cost for a slightly narrower replacement neck with a more curved radius & now have a real keeper !

Just great bass guitar!

I would sincerely recommend this guitar to anyone looking for low budget bass.

Beautiful and simple design.

Guitar playable out of the box.

There are no sharp edges on freats , no defects in the paint,...

Can produce a lot different sounds, from tight low end to trebbly sound.

My only criticism would be that it would be good to upgrade the guitar by deepening the bridge pickup slot so you can lower the action, because if you want to go lower now you can’t because of that pickup, and it’s a bit sharp if you play aggressively.

Similar to the Squier bass guitar.

Fully satisfied - excellent value

I've been a (bad :) ) guitarist for the past 15 years and always felt tempted to start learning a bass guitar. My plan was to use this bass mainly for home practising and experimenting with the bass or maybe smallish jam session with friends or in the pub.

I did quite a lot of research - my top priority was playability over looks. This was my pick based on the reviews here and some youtube videos as all of them claim very good value for the money (so my expectation was quite high).

The bass arrived in good packaging and out of the box it looked very well. The finish is very good for the money. Nice color of the body and matching headstock, neck with a great wood texture and satin finish. The frets are nicely done and there are no sharp edges. There are small flaws around the truss rod hole and the place where the neck joins the body. The pickguard has some very small flaws around the edges. It is covered with a thin film, which can be removed and the looks and feel of it will greatly improve. All in all I am just nitpicking here - the finish is really good and I wouldn't be bothered by it for instruments costing twice the money of this one.

From playability perspective the bass is amazing and very well setup out of the box. Bass arrived almost in tune. The intonation (through saddles on the bridge) is well setup and the intonation across the fretboard is good (checked with a tuner), the neck is straight. The same applies to the action (though I adjusted it to my taste). The bridge, nut and tuners feel cheap (you can actually find them to be low cost parts on aliexpress), but do their job. I had some issues with rattles in the bridge, but that got resolved by playing with it a bit. The pickups work fine and give a nice tone (nothing really fancy, but works well). Again, amazing value for the money - the bass is perfectly playable.

All in all I am very satisfied and happy with this purchase - I've been playing the bass every day for the past month and I am still enjoying it (and haven't found any more serious flaws yet). Just like the others I don't understand what kind of magic HB does in order to deliver that good bass for the money.

Very good overall quality. Body and neck was correct. The sound is overall good but the P sound is better articulated than the J. The bridge pu (J) is weaker than the neck P. The P pickup has good attack and depth and loud but the bridge J is weaker and not so growling. I will replace them. Hardwares are OK, finish is nice. Potentiometers and electronics should be upgraded/replaced. For this money this instrument is a best buy and a good basis to upgrade.