Harley Benton MV-4P LH Black

I learned that these MV bases, maybe all HB instruments, are a bit of a gamble.

I first purchased the MV-4 MSB and it was splendid right out of the box. Well dressed frets, perfect finish and well set up. That was not the case with this purchase.

The neck on this bass was really poor. The frets sprout was horrible. Zero care seem to have been put into the frets. It got hit with a fret file to put a sharp angle on the frets and then sent out the door.

But even worse than that, the skunk stripe was not flush with the neck, sunken by an uncomfortable amount. This is not something that is nice to play on. I have purchased quite a few new guitars with a skunk stripe and have never seen this before.

I went back and forth with Thomann on this a few times, and apparently their quality control metric is "playable". In their mind, the sunken skunk stripe does not impact playability. I've seen some pretty horrible guitars that could technically be considered "playable", so keep that in mind.

So I will have to dress the frets, and I will have to sand and refinish the neck. Once that is done, it will be an excellent bass, but that's probably not what most customers are going to want to do.

Needless to say I am rather disappointed with this bass and Thomann's customer service on this.

So as I said, you are taking your chances with these MV-4 basses. I bought two. One was great. One was definitely not.