Post by strangelet on Nov 4, 2016 14:27:33 GMT
Here's my quick review of a Harley Benton MM-85A SB Deluxe I bought recently from Thomann. Pictures and sounds will (probably) follow (when I get the time to do them;).
Pros:
- Looks. The bass looks killer, it's more of a sienna burst with nice tigerstripes;)
- Nice growly sound. 2 massive humbackers from Wilkinson do the job! With the active preamp there's a lot of tonal options you can get out of this instrument. It's not a real MM, but it has a good resemblence to it.
- It's a pretty good value for the money, I think as a bass guitar, despite the quality issues, it's a good opponent for the Sub range by Sterling.
- The B string sounds ok, comparable to my ESP B206SM.
QA Cons:
- Lousy packaging - the bass was sent in a box-in-a-box package, air packs being the only thing keeping the internal box from moving freely there. Yet, the bass was not secured properly inside and on the internal box there were signs of the tuning pegs piercing it at least once. Lesson for the future, always make photos of that!
- Nasty blemish on the headstock, looked like somone at the factory wiped a finger on one of the edges removing the lacquer (fixed with steel wool & TruOil).
- Horrible fretwork, with some frets not being crowned properly nad some not sitting fully in the neck. Intonation seems to be fine and there's no frett buzz luckily, no sharp edges, doen't seem to have any effect on the sound, so no real resend candidate. From what it looks like, the frets not inserted properly were leveld a bit too flat and not fully recrowned.
Design Cons:
- The bridge being slightly too far away from the edge of the body (compare that to a real MM or even the cheaper lookalike from HB)
- The string spacing is bigger then pole spacing on the pickups, slightly, but it is. It looks like a design flaw, not a QA issue though - they are evenly spread.
Pros:
- Looks. The bass looks killer, it's more of a sienna burst with nice tigerstripes;)
- Nice growly sound. 2 massive humbackers from Wilkinson do the job! With the active preamp there's a lot of tonal options you can get out of this instrument. It's not a real MM, but it has a good resemblence to it.
- It's a pretty good value for the money, I think as a bass guitar, despite the quality issues, it's a good opponent for the Sub range by Sterling.
- The B string sounds ok, comparable to my ESP B206SM.
QA Cons:
- Lousy packaging - the bass was sent in a box-in-a-box package, air packs being the only thing keeping the internal box from moving freely there. Yet, the bass was not secured properly inside and on the internal box there were signs of the tuning pegs piercing it at least once. Lesson for the future, always make photos of that!
- Nasty blemish on the headstock, looked like somone at the factory wiped a finger on one of the edges removing the lacquer (fixed with steel wool & TruOil).
- Horrible fretwork, with some frets not being crowned properly nad some not sitting fully in the neck. Intonation seems to be fine and there's no frett buzz luckily, no sharp edges, doen't seem to have any effect on the sound, so no real resend candidate. From what it looks like, the frets not inserted properly were leveld a bit too flat and not fully recrowned.
Design Cons:
- The bridge being slightly too far away from the edge of the body (compare that to a real MM or even the cheaper lookalike from HB)
- The string spacing is bigger then pole spacing on the pickups, slightly, but it is. It looks like a design flaw, not a QA issue though - they are evenly spread.