Harley Benton JA-Baritone BK

Sadly the instrument I received had a faulty bridge pickup so I am unable to give a "fair" review of a faultless instrument.

Firstly, out of the box it needed a few tweaks to get it to where it played without crazy fret buzz, which isn't an issue at all as I'd expect to need to alter things like string height and intonation on an instrument of this cost. After that, it played brilliantly; the neck and fret ends felt flawless, better than some much higher spec and much more expensive instruments.
Play-ability was good and I was very pleasantly surprised by how well it physically felt and played.

Sadly, however, the bridge pick up had a fault and was woefully under powered, measuring at just 6.2k ohms versus the 9k ohms of the neck. After reaching out to the Thomann team they requested it returned to be replaced, though I requested a refund as I've lost a bit of faith in the QC process.

Now some 23 days after posting off the guitar I am still awaiting a refund, so the best part of a month without instrument or the money I spent on it. Be prepared to play the lottery, as always, with instruments this cheap. If the bridge pick up wasn't faulty, this would have been an immaculate player with a perfect feeling neck and frets. Sadly it was not to be.

Was besonders an dem Instrument ist, ist das Gewicht von 4,7 kg. Ich kenne immer noch Musiker, insbesondere Bassisten, die glauben der Basssound käme aus dem Body, je schwerer umso besser. Und dann füttern sie das Signal in die DAW oder den digitalen sound processor.

Die Mechaniken haben kleine Knöpfe und sind deshalb schwierig zu drehen und gehen sehr schwer. Die könnte man vielleicht mit ein bisschen Arbeit ersetzen. Sonst fällt an dem Instrument nichts auf.

Ich ziehe short scale Bassaiten auf und habe mit einer tune-o-matik Piezo Bridge meine Möglichkeiten erweitert. Verrückt - oder?
Ich würde das Instrument vor allem wegen des horrenden Gewichts nicht nochmal kaufen.

Main point is, this guitar is a lot of fun and sounds great. Absolutely worth it at this price!

However, my one came with one fret not glued in properly, and all the frets had been dressed poorly, with visible sanding lines which the strings were getting caught in when playing. Thankfully I know how to set guitars up well, so I’ve sorted these issues now.

However, during the setup, I also found 2 more issues: (1) the truss rod hex seems to have to been ground down somehow, meaning it couldn’t be adjusted, so the neck is ever so slightly further back than I’d want, and (2) the pickup height screws don’t work properly, so one of them always sits up from the pickup and can’t be set back down.

Again, super cheap guitar that is way better quality and way more fun than it should be for the price. But, if I didn’t know how to dress the frets myself, it would have been sent back given the other issues it came with too