I own a Harley Benton club

I like it too, just imagining that as road wear...

 

Can't answer for Volker, use PCB terminal mounts myself.

 

A guy in UK, eBay seller plushtone_guitars. He uses good quality, tight tolerance pots and jacks. Not CTS and Switchcraft, but comparable.

 

i've tried. actually, the coil that's closest to neck is ok. I've discovered this by wiring each coil to a volume tone, so i had vol (p), vol (single coil), vol (single coil). both coils together produced out of phase, thin weak sound. first coil and P sounded good. the pickup i'm using now, the one from aliexpress works only in humbucking mode for now, as i've rewired everything with original preamp. i'm considering having a coil tap switch installed. but for now, since aliexpress pickup works like a charm i see no reason to do that.

fret edges are great, they are on par with lakland skylines. frets even, and polished. great craftmanship on enhanced series, en par with their fusion II series guitars and those are imho stunning. ebony fretboard was dry when it arrived but i've oiled it so now there should be no issues. also, i've got 5string milky jazz (look at the end of the post to see the pic). imho, milky is a step up in frets and feel. frets are really polished and there is lacquer applied on the fretboard. that seems to solve issue with frets either being uneven and/or sharp because ebony fretboard was dry from the start (imho) and basses sitting in warehouses with noone being there to oil and maintain them caused the frets to go wild.

if i'm getting this right, you are not satisfied with the way enhanced P sounds? imho, it's not really the issue with pickup being reversed, it's the pickup. those "delano immitations" by roswell are a dud imho. I've ordered cheapo P bass pickup from aliexpress and will test it. it's not perfect fit, just a 2mm larger. that should not be too hard to fix, just a bit of scalpel and patience with the pickguard. here is the pickup:
US $9.11 |Electric Bass Pickups 5 String for P Bass Parts Accessories Noiseless Bridge Neck Set Black-in Guitar Parts & Accessories from Sports & Entertainment on AliExpress

now i've seen there are also alnico pickups, but shipping is 25$ so,. yes.
US $16.76 9% OFF|Black 5 String Precision Bass Vintage Sound Pickup Alnico V P Bass Pickups Set-in Guitar Parts & Accessories from Sports & Entertainment on AliExpress

oh! milky! <3 i've also got one few days ago:
again, a step up from regular enhanced in quality. it seems bridge pickup is working ok, still a bit of phasy sound here and there but all in all much better. also, neck pickup sounds amazing! top notch! aside from that only issue i had was a faulty input jack (fixed it). again,i've replaced the birdge pickup with the 10$ aliexpress but now i'm cosidering turning it into passive JJ bass (that would be sire/fender killer), more on that in video review.




short review from the site, i'll do a video review sometimes this/next week :

let's start with cons
-bridge pickup is a bit thin and out of phase (issue with all enhanced basses), fixed by ordering 10$ replacement MM pickup from aliexpress. took me 15mins to replace

-input jack was not set properly and has some issues, so at first there was just noise without signal. i've took it apart and screwed it back in place, it's ok now but from time to time it looses signal and makes noise

-guts are not properly shielded, that's an easy fix

and now PROS:
-amazing hardware, great bridge, tuner work very smooth
-preamp is good, really good, the issue is again, bridge pickup, and with 10$ replacement you get a great bass
-perfect frets and finish
-best, most comfortable 5 string neck i've tried. also, i can get super low action without buzzing.
-bass looks and feels like it's 4 times it's price

conclusion:
with a bit of work and cheap investment you can get lakland skyline level quality. The only issue is that bridge pickup but that can be fixed for cheaps. asside imput jack and bridge pickup, every thing else is amazing, not just "for price", simply amazing!

it's a bit heavy (+4,5 kg) , but then again it's full sized 5 string J bass and it's balanced so that's not a huge issue.

 

This bass looks awesome! Your positive review of it makes me want to get it even more... But i would have to sell smthg lol. Anyway: looking forward to your video about it!

 

Im starting to think all Harley Benton basses are heavy. I received a PB-50, beautiful, nice tone, workmanship excellent but tipping at 5 kilos around 11 lbs was a turnoff for me. Found a buyer right away.

 

not all, 5strings aren't that heavy considering they are full sized body. enhanced's pickups are really heavy, that MM and big poles P has lots of mass to it.also, i had PJ74 that was around 3,5kg.

 

Why are they (like the PB50 and jazz basses) so heavy? Is it a wood quality issue? If the jazz is ash (I don't have mine yet, so I can't comment on the weight, but from everything I've heard it's heavy as sin) why is it, in theory, so much heavier than my Lakland 5str jazz which is ash, or my Lull P5, which is ash? Is lower quality ash heavier? And is heavier or light wood more resonant? Or does that not matter? My Lull is surprisingly light, and very easy to play. And from what I've seen of "boutique" basses, a typical bragging point is how light they are. But is that a factor in just easy of playability because you're not standing there all night with a boat anchor around your neck? Or is a light bass indicative of one that will be more resonant and/or sound better?

 

Because they're so f…ing big. Just look at them next to any reasonably sized modern design.

 

Milky is a great bass. I've now made up a list of things I'm doing to it.
-Paint the body pink
-Make a steel pickguard and blast it
-Make a parallel-series-single toggle for the bridge pickup
-Remove the neck pickup (holeless pickguard)
(-Machine a new bridge later down the line)

I removed the HB and pro series stickers as they looked a tad tacky imo. Left the branding as it's just fine. A great mod bass for 300€

 

Yes, that too!

 

I would suspect that they get the "less ideal" cuts for cheap as well. The less-than-average weight being a selling point for more expensive boards.

 

So sonically, is heavier worse or better? Obviously it's worse for your back, but that's less of a concern to my ginormous self. If it's heavier because the wood is more dense, I can see more dense wood resonating less, maybe. But if it's just heavier because it's MORE wood, but the wood itself is still a resonant wood, shouldn't that be a good thing sonically? I have no science with which to back this up. Just postulating.

 

Understood, but very often "light" is a selling point (swamp ash vs. just "ash"), being I don't often see advertised as a selling point, though there are those that want it heavy and dense. All the factories pull from the same stock, typically, so the harvesters will sell the wood with more desirable attributes (grain, low defect, weight) to the makers that sell higher end instruments.

 

Beliefs differ. Many an ignorant will speak of "a good weight" in reviews and equate it to all sorts of imaginary qualities.

 

I guess to me heavier in some respects would be better. I would feel a bit more confident in my instrument. Like I'm playing something solid and substantial, less fragile. And if worse comes to worse in a bar fight, I could swing it and take somebody's head off. That being said, my lightweight Lull resonates like a dream. You can feel it all the way through when you pluck a note.

I can't wait to see how the HB stacks up. Even if it is a boat anchor.

 

I used to rock an early Ibanez ATK which was a boat anchor and a half, but it just had that tone I loved. I said lightness was a selling point, not that it was an end-all-be-all quality. Case in point, I cut a bass body from Oak(!) and Mahogany and put two ATK pickups in it... It's a fiver so its more like 2 boat anchors Sounds great, though.

In some cases you simply don't have a choice in the weight if you want the "sound"

But bear in mind, if you read through this thread you'll see tons of "The first HB they sent was really heavy, I was able to return it, no questions asked and the next one was much lighter!", so if you find it too heavy and you are patient you might be able to get it replaced with a lighter one.

 

In production situations timber is bought by the cubic metre. There's no grading by weight,it gets stacked in lengths of FAS,palletised and sold.

Sure I've saw the videos of the guy leaving his feng shui office and spending the day tapping lumps of timber while waxing lyrical about it's properties. Worked with timber all my life so I love seeing that BS

Timber comes in,gets machined and goes out.

 

Huh I always figured there was some presorting of lumber so they could mark it up based on demand for the "best" lumber...

 

Naw. It gets lumped together and sold in bulk. Imagine you're the purchasing manager for Fender,800 guitars are the daily output. Nobody is shifting through a yard for 4000 blanks week in/week out.

Different for your local timber seller,he goes to the whole seller and buys raw timber. This he machines for usable lengths and grades how he feels. There's no official grading system so what he calls AAAA++++ somebody else rates as plain FAS.

Guitar factories just use what they have. Plenty folks have stripped Fenders and Gibsons for refins only to find Bondo