Harley Benton PJ-75 VW Vintage Series 3-stars Reviews

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.

Not great out of the box, but a fantastic platform for modding.

5 String PJ basses are hard to come by, as such I was drawn to this instrument.

Out of the box, the fit and finish I couldn't fault. However, there was some serious fret buzz on a fair few frets from 10 and above. This was down to uneven frets and I needed to seriously level the frets. Having done this, it now plays with a very low action and feels lovely.

The pickups are mixed. The P pickup is pretty decent. The J pickup to me sounds horrible, and mixing it into the P just didn't work. That may be personal taste.

I've since replaced the pickups, bridge and machine heads and this is now one of my favourite basses.

If it had arrived not needing a fret dress, I'd say it's entirely worth the money. Perhaps I got a bad one.

value for money, poor strings, poor quality of the wood of the neck.

I was looking for a p-passive 5 strings bass and I got this one. The neck is D-Shape, comfortable at playing, but the wood of which the neck is made is 2nd choice material, full of wooden knots and not regular as it should be for a mid-high level of instrument of the Harley Benton line (the most expensive 5 strings HB bass costs 330 euros).

The bolt of the jack plug was too much tightened, so it ruined the area around it.

The pick-ups are silent, and this is a good new: no hum or noise. Anyway they needed an accurate setup, because they came with the screws all lifted up. For an instrument of about 200 euros something more accurate could be expected, even if not the top of the factory adjustment.

The sound is quite good, but only after having changed the strings (35 euros), having redone the setup, and having adjusted the distance of the pickups from the strings. I would have liked more care in the setup before the delivery.