Harley Benton Enhanced MP-4EB Creme

I have had this bass for about a month now, and am very encouraged by the overall construction and stability. It arrived well-adjusted except for the string height at the bridge, which was too high but simple to lower. The locking screws on the bridge pieces hold them in place, just don't forget to loosen them first before making any adjustments. The truss rod didn't need any adjustment but is easy to adjust if you need to, and responsive. Other plus points include the zero fret , the tuners are very good, and overall it's a stable platform to work on. After a little setup I find it enjoyable to play.

One minor complaint about the body: there is very little contouring under the right arm, which makes it uncomfortable to play seated. It could stand to have some wood carved away under the arm for comfort.

I have some concerns about the electronics as supplied, though. Firstly, the supplied pickups have Ceramic magnets, not AlNiCo-5 as stated on the website. The P pickup is much more powerful than the MM pickup: it has to be one of the most powerful pickups I have ever heard. I like that, personally, but it has consequences for the standard electronics which don't show this bass in its best light.

- The balance control doesn't work well: its effect is centred around the middle, but the middle position favours the P pickup because of its power. For the outer thirds of its travel, nothing happens.

- The preamp distorts when the P pickup is selected and volume turned up full. It doesn't have the headroom to cope with the ceramic P pickup's high output, with the single 9V battery.

My personal solution to this was to remove the preamp and wire the bass for passive operation, with a 2-volume, 2-tone configuration (500k pots) and separate pickup outputs. In to a better preamp (a Mackie Onyx 2*2 USB interface), the P-pickup really shines, and with a bit more gain the MM pickup sounds better too.

In conclusion, the solid construction makes this bass a very good platform for those like me who like to customise instruments, but in my opinion the supplied balance control and preamp compromise the instrument, and going passive improved the sound (up to 5*). 2V2T controls are more usable and the pickups sound very good through a better preamp. I look forward to hearing what this baby can do live, which I think it is more than capable of handling.

Pros:
-features (ebony board, steel frets, inlays, binding, trough body stringing, great bridge)
-great finish
-unbelivable neck for the money
-even frets, great action
-preamp is great

CONS:
-pickups are way way over the top pumped and hot. There is just too much going on with that P pickup and MM pickup is a bit thin. They fixed that phase issue some enhanced models had. you have to play around a lot to get even, balanced sound. pickups are way to sensitive and moving one side of the P pickup lower by a mm affects the loudness of strings over it by a lot. i had E&A strings clip my preamp and G&D strings being few dBs below clipping. also, bridge pickup is acting wierd, E string is clipping, rest of them are way quieter. really strange issues with pickups.

One thing, if you play with pick and use drive, than the stock pickups are the way to go.

September 2022 update:
I've upgraded the bass with EMG P and EMG MMTW pickups with EMG BQC Control 3 band preamp. bass sounds mind blowing now! These should come stock! No issues with using P and MM pickup at the same time. This bass is my no1 player now!

I ordered this bass because I love the sound of both the P Bass, and the Stingray and I really admire the Harley Benton brand for bringing so many different styles of bass at an affordable price. The bass is nice and light with a very ergonomic but very familiar tradition yet with a modern feel. The finish of the stainless steel frets, the binding and the block inlays is amazing with no sharp ends and the ebony board and satin maple neck is a dream to play. The overall fit and finish of this bass is flawless, this looks and feels like a much more expensive bass. I have Fenders, Warwicks, and stingrays and this thing can easily be in the same build quality as these big name brands. The versatility of the tones is huge, but you do have to be careful because the P pickup in active is massively more powerful than the MM pickup. The eq is great if you want to dial in specific tones but again you can massively overpower the bottom end especially on the P pickup. If you have the patience to play around with it, it will reward you. Overall this is a fantastic bass , both in quality and sounds, I would definitely recommend to both beginners and more experienced players out there. I am just waiting for happier times when I can be allowed to tour with this bass.

I bought this bass as a mod platform because 1. stainless frets 2. ebony fretboard (with binding), 3. Reverse P/MM pickup layout 4. expected HB quality. I'm not an active guy so I planned on swapping out a bunch of stuff right away. When I received it it was setup pretty well with a low (lower than I like) action. When using active, there's a bit of a blown out sound when controls are dimed. But overall it sounded nice and easily gigable as is.

I pulled out the active electronics and the pickups and replaced with a Fender Precision 63 pickup and a Seymour Duncan SMB-4A wired VVT with a toggle switch for the SMB-4A to give Series, Parallel, and single coil. CTS 500k linear taper pots. This thing sounds great and plays as well as any bass I've ever played. The fret ends were well finished and the binding gives it a touch of class.

The only negative (and it's a VERY minor gripe) is that overall paint isn't anywhere as nicely done as the 25th anniversary models I have. There are a couple paint runs that were cleared over but you can barely see them, only feel them if you rub your hand over them. Like I said, very minor gripe as I bought it for playing, not staring at.

Playing this bass approx. one month at home studio.
The bass require some tweaks and fixes, but can't reach "just ok" level.

Quality.

Frets are extremely sharp on a neck edges which makes play quite dangerous. Spent some time and money to fix it but after few weeks frets become sharp again.

This means wood quality is not ok. Other things is normal, but frets issue kill everything.

Electronics.

Neck pickup is too loud, too much gain. Middle balance position means neck. To get balanced neck-bridge sound I have to move balance 60-70% towards "bridge only" position.

Active mode is very noisy and clippy. Actually you can't record this bass in active mode just from a box.

Solutions is to disable active mode and lost EQ feature or play with volume knob to reduce clipping and noise.

Misc.

Before purchase I though it's a good idea to have such pickups setup and active electronics in classic body shape. But there are design issue - it's not working and I have no idea how to make it good without total replacement - preamp/pickups/etc.

So, it's not good even as a base for upgrades due to quite high price.

Pros:

- lightweight
- nice colour
- nice hardware

Cons:

- sharp frets
- unusable electronics
- difficult to record without noise and clipping

I do not recommend it for purchase.