Harley Benton HBO-850 Bass Natural

What a great product. I wanted a bass to play that was easy to set up and didn’t need to be plugged in. I’m in Canada and it took less than 5 days to arrive...amazing! It sounds great unplugged and plugged into an amp. The on-board tuner works well while the fret edges are decent. The frets are level which is the most important thing on a neck. A strap that grips my clothes will solve the neck dive. The only thing I’ll end up changing are the tuners but the stock ones work well enough or now. I play in a two bands and I bought this bass with the intention of using it for practice only. It WILL find it’s way on the stage because it’s a quality, cool looking instrument. I bought it because I thought it would suit my needs and it was inexpensive. If I had been able to play it before purchasing it, I would have paid more for it. Great work THOMANN! It’s the 4th guitar that I’ve purchased and I’ve been satisfied with all of them. I’ve also purchased other products (speaker covers and locking tuners) which were priced better than anywhere else! Happy Customer from CANADA!

I got this HB acoustic bass to practice in the Living Room without having to have amps cluttering my living space. It's well built, and good looking. Needed minor setup. I was not crazy about the strings that came with it...a little too "twangy", which is common with an acoustic bass. After talking with a musician at a local bar gig who was playing an acoustic bass...he said he had the same issue with his expensive acoustic bass and replaced the strings with nylon tape-wound strings. They are black, look cool and sound much better. The wood design pieces glued on could use some minor sanding or oiling. I like this bass...it's a great practice tool for me (I'm a beginner...my wife is the musician) and we also have the matching round back HB classical nylon string guitar, and just ordered the steel string round back version too. Outstanding values for a ridiculously small amount of money. Buy it!

I bought this because I am doing some acoustic gigs with a friend. No amps are allowed and I wanted to be able to use bass on a few of the tracks. I wanted something not too large and also didn't want to spend a lot. So what do I think of it?

The first thing that I noticed was that it looks the part. The second thing I noticed was how fragile the glued on scroll work is when a bit of it fell off. I just glued it back on - I wasn't going to send it back for something that trivial. The key thing is that it played well enough out of the box (for what it is). Even the neck relief was OK, but now it has acclimatised it does need a touch of 'righty tighty' to get it correct. Acoustically it sounds OK, if as one would expect a little toppy. I play quite hard so for me the volume against one western acoustic guitar is OK. If you are one of the gentle players you would need to amplify it.

The things I like - the body size and material. Sits on my lap easily and I'm sure it's going to be durable. On a strap there is obvious neck dive, to be expected when the neck is so long and the body so light. I have seen comments that the tuner is not usable - I beg to differ, I have found it perfectly OK as long as you tune to the octave harmonics.
Amplified I am not enamoured with the sound - it lacks depth without a lot of EQ being applied, even with the bass turned right up on the built in pre-amp. The fret edges are not perfect, a little scratchy in parts, but I didn't notice this when I was playing it until I did a glissando and cut three of my fingers. I immediately smoothed them off to avoid any further incidents.

To conclude, you really can't go far wrong with this instrument at this price. Don't expect it to be more than it is and you'll be quite happy with it. So I recommend it.