Harley Benton PJ-75 VW Vintage Series

My new favorite

OK, so this isn't actually my favorite bass that I own, but nothing can replace my 73 fretless P Bass. But that's not the bass I want to play on most of our songs. The PJ-75 is. I primarily play it as a full P, and the sound just works for me. And then there are the times when I want to mix in the J or go for some other variation - you know, all those various sound options one wants from a passive PJ - they're all available. This isn't exactly a light bass. After our last 3 hour gig I woke up the next morning remembering that I'm a middle aged man who had a large chunk of lumber on my shoulder for a few hours. But that's hard to overcome if you to play a 5 string like this. I have noticed that after playing for a few hours the outside of my left pointer finger is calloused. I looked carefully, and I think the frets are a hair wider than the fretboard which a good tech should be able to fix with a little extra rounding and/or polishing. Considering the price, I can afford that little bit of work. One thing to know - like most passive JBs, if you turn the neck pickup to full and then turn the bridge pickup to full the overall output on mine decreases. One day I may add a series / parallel switch to give me some additional options there, but even if I never get around to it, I'm thrilled with this bass.

Excellent Bass!

Needed very little initial setup. Plays very nicely and looks great! Highly recommend.

Decent Beginner's Instrument

Unlike a lot of HB guitars, HB basses have a long way to go. To keep this short and sweet: Tuners: must be replaced immediately. This was to be expected - the tuners on this bass are laughably bad. You'd be tuning between each song if you took it onstage. Neck: straight, but fret sprout was atrocious. Took multiple passes cleaning up the fret edges before this thing was playable. Pickups/sound: Not very good. I have a passive Mexican Fender Jazz and P-Basses and, stung up with the same brand of strings and through the same amp... this thing is not even in the same universe. Sounds cheap and junky... which it is. In the case of this instrument, you're getting what you paid for. On the other hand it's affordable and it looks awesome. But you would need to do the above and then go ahead and swap the electronics and pickups to get this thing on the level of a mediocre Mexican Fender. This could turn out to be a very costly exercise on a 5-string. If you come into this with the mindset of needing to spend another $300-$400 to make this a bass you play in the studio or onstage. At that point, you're approaching the cost of a used Fender bass. I've been happy with my guitar purchases from HB, but this bass? If I could do it all over again, I'd have just saved up and bought a used 5-string Fender. Much better resale value, less hassle.

Very Good for the price

Very nice Bass for beginners, very playable right out of the box, weight is nice and light, looks incredible and if necessary, very easy to mod/upgrade with better pickups or maybe even a better bridge. No real complaints.

Really great bass!

I just bought the Harley Benton PJ-75 VW Vintage Series bass and have been playing on it for a few days. It’s feeling and sounding pretty awesome and I’m very impressed with the finish on the bass. I will say my frets were a bit rough on the edges and needed some filing , but once we did that it feels great and plays really well! Worth it for sure! Thank you guys for a killer instrument .

The best PJ you will ever have

I love this bass. The controls the tones it's perfect. This is becoming one of my favorite go to basses. Fret work was great no sharp edges after it settled in to local temp. Setup was spot on out the box. You can't go wrong with this bass at all.

Precision is precision. Enough said...

Got mine couple days ago - cannot put it down. Pretty sturdy, well-built bass with classic Precision vibe. The sound on P-pickup is warm and round, you may want to engage J-pickup for more treble and mids. For me the sweet spot is 100% tone, 100% P-pickup and 50% J-pickup volume. Got decent low-end and just enough treble even on my 30 watts amp with these settings. The instrument worth all the money paid and sounds even better than my previous double humbucker bass.

What about cons? Not so much. One volume pot is loose and some marks on finish.

Thanks for reading.

Great for the price

The pickups are a bit lackluster but for this price, you won't find a higher quality bass.

good bang for the bucks, with some qsmall quality issues

Nothing to tell about the sound, it plays well and is comfortable, but one annoying issue has been that the side of the fretboard is sharp.

generally good bass for the money!

Great playability

A great bass for the price, well balanced and great to play