Harley Benton HBV 990BEM 4/4 Electric Violin

I already own an acoustic violin and bought this violin for quiet practice. I'm a 63 year old amateur.

Overall surface finish is fine and the plastic maple finish is quite handsome.

The sound when played without using the headphones is loud enough for practice and much more pleasant than using a heavy practice mute on an acoustic.

The supplied bow is useable and of reasonable quality

Like any violin the chin rest is fine if your chin suits its pattern and if not it can be easily replaced using a standard violin chinrest.

The violin pegs quality are fine and are fitted well enough not to slip.

I found the violins action ( string height ) fine for my playing which does not stray out of the first or second position fine.

Using the headphone out required a large amount treble cut to produce a non screeching sound.

The violins sound using an external amplifier can be made quite pleasant using reverb to give a more spacious sound.

The violin and supplied accessories however suffer from quality and design defects as follows:

The strings are terrible and It doesn't need expensive strings. The ones I replaced the provided set with where quite cheap Chinese Dominant imitations that gave an immediate improvement in sound and playability.

While replacing the strings I came across a major quality failure. The tailpiece is a Witner ultra clone that at first glance looks fine but on close inspection showed a major manufacturing defect. The supplied e string ball end did not look like it was seated correctly in the adjuster of the tailpiece and also showed evidence of the slot being prised apart. Before fitting new strings I removed the bridge and found that the problem was caused by swarf (metal waste) from the cutting of the slots not being removed. This meant that none of the strings where seated correctly. This failure is a shame as the rest of the tailpiece and attaching wire is quite acceptable. I replaced the tailpiece with a real Witner ultra tailpiece.

If you buy one of these violins or one that uses similar electronics you should be aware of a possible safety issue. When switching on the headphone amplifier there is a pop that is loud enough to cause hearing damage if the user is wearing the headphones. So you should only switch on when not wearing the headphones. A soft start to remove this pop is something that can be provided by a component that costs pence.

The supplied headphones are a joke and are only fit for recycling. I replaced them with a pair of £2 earbuds.

Another joke is the shoulder rest that is neither comfortable or secure when fitted. Some types of normal shoulder rest will probably fit the plastic frame.

The case provided would be fine if the zip did not show signs of not being sown on correctly.

In conclusion I can't say I'm impressed with Thomann's Harley Benton line quality control. Most of my comments have been made previously by other reviewers so should have already been sorted out. I've ended up at the end of the day with what I wanted but not out of the box which is what I would have expected from Europe's major musical instrument shop.

Bought this as a bday gift for my sister who wanted to try out how electric violins may feel like prior to me commencing a custom build on one. I knew going in that this will have some quality issues so I was not bugged when it came through. The following are the main two gripes:

1. The transducer pickup is particularly low quality and did not sit right so strings had varying levels picked up and treble was piercing at first. Kinda works better after trying to figure the best way to seat it right but could still be a bit better.
2. The shoulder rest mounting is just strange. It does not sit in place and we had to McGyver a contraption to make it sit where it should. Don't understand why they could not make it clip in place instead of just "rest into" extremely loose holes in the plastic rear cover.

Overall a good intro into the e-violin world, but defnitely not something that would be kept as is for more than a year or so. Fair price though so not complaining.