Harley Benton JB-75FL SB Vintage Series

As seems to be the case - HB products really set bar high for other inexpensive musical products!
My initial idea was to buy a cheap bass and then maybe change the bridge, pickups and tuners just to polish it up a bit. Well, bridge and tuners are doing their job quite well so there isn't any critical reason to change them (as they don't arguably affect the tone as much as the rest of the parts anyway...). What about the pickups? They're staying! This bass has a really nice warm and balanced tone when both pickups are full (a bit of woolliness can be heard, though). Rolling the neck pickup back a hair opens the sound really nicely and harmonics ring pretty loud and clear. Soloing the bridge pickup does exactly what it should do. Sound is clear, melodic and harmonics loud and bright - without being harsh! Some electrical hiss is present when pickups are not in equal positions but that is kind of expected in any passive j-bass with single coil pickups.
So ultimately I ended up just changing the strings to D'Addario Chromes just to save the fingerboard and thats it!
Construction is in all respects on par with more expensive basses (not boutique of course...). At least on my bass the pau ferro fingerboard is a beautiful slab of wood, the maple neck has some really cool grain patterns on it and lastly the three piece ash body is very well joined and matched. Finishing is really good all around and the sunburst is pretty much flawless. Pickguard is cheap -ish, but by no means bad looking (I'm keeping it on place).
I don't really know what more one would get in terms of overall quality by spending double or even five times the money spent on this bass. Parts with more established names probably?
For those who care: I have about 30 years of experience playing high end and low end basses just to point out that although these are just my humble opinions they are not done without any knowledge of other basses, parts, pickups or electronics.
All in all an excellent buy and really good basic fretless bass!
*Edit after one year of playing:
So first things first - I still love this bass and keep playing it daily amidst my other basses.
Some fixing and modding has happened though. I ended up changing the pickups after a year to EMG J's with tried and true Vol, Vol, Tone -electronics. Woolliness of both pickups full has vanished and sound is more open. It wasn't all that bad to begin with, but definitely an upgrade worth doing. No electric hum anymore either when soloing the bridge pickup!
Finland is quite a hard climate for wooden instruments because of the changes in humidity during different seasons. After the first winter I went on to sand and polish the whole fretboard and applied new oil to it. Trimmed also a few fretmarker ends that had started sticking out on the treble side of the fingerboard. Now it's perfect and also keeps in tune amazingly well. And yes, still love this bass :)

What a perfect instrument. Just a little heavy. It looks good, and the pickups are great. Not to mention the roundwound strings. Absolute dead-on fit for the tone of Jeff Ament. It feels great to play as well, and it's very fun to play. I'm addicted. It'll bite your fingers a while though, so the first few days will be tough because you have to play but it hurts. This bass actually made me learn to use my pinky which isn't that hard actually, and my pinky is very weak. It's different than what I'm used to, you generally need it here to stay in tune and because of the long scale. Had no problem migrating fron short-scale fretted. I didn't find this instrument to be hard to play at all, so don't be afraid.

Sorry for the wall of text, I don't know where to split the paragraphs at this time of day (3:30 am).

But great quality instrument, Harley Benton basses seem great from my experiences so far.

You will love it! I sure do.

Decided to give a fretless a try for the first time and have read generally positive reviews about Harley Benton so thought it made perfect sense to give one a try.

Everything about the purchasing experience was excellent. Thomann does it right. Excellent communication and I received the bass 3 days after purchasing it. The bass was packed extremely well. Double boxed, plenty of foam packing, the fingerboard was protected, the pickguard, chrome cover-plate and pick-ups were also protected. I was genuinely surprised how well it was packed.

The action was very low out of the box and I've kept it that way. Had to do some minor saddle adjustments to get the intonation right and the bridge is definitely a place where an upgrade would probably be worth it. Its not terrible but the saddles are a little sticky . But I was able to get spot-on intonation without having to adjust the truss rod so a bridge upgrade isn't a priority for me.

Playing a fretless for the first time was pretty awesome. Should have picked one up sooner. Took a little getting used to but in a cool way as I immediately started liking how easily I could manipulate pitch with my left-hand. The pick-ups on the Harley Benton are pretty lively, seem a bit hotter than my Geddy jazz stock pick-ups. Pick-up volume and tone pots are all smooth and responsive. Love the overall sound of the bass and the neck is smooth and easy to play.

The bass is heavy (mine is about 12 pounds) so a wide, padded strap is helpful. It plays unbelievably well given this price point.

Bottom line, the Harley Benton impressed me completely. Extreme bang for the buck. Its almost hard to believe how good this instrument is for this price. This was also my first purchase with Thomann and I'm completely satisfied with the purchasing experience. So satisfied in fact, that I just ordered another bass.

Having never owned a fretless, but having played bass guitar for almost 40 years, I was very late to the party in picking up a fretless bass for the first time. I already owned the HB MM 5-String Deluxe so I knew about the generally excellent quality and value of HB guitars. Thus, it was a no-brainer to pick up this fretless to plug the gap in my library of sound options.

I specifically wanted a few things:
- Jaco-like sound, thus a fretless JB was the only choice
- Fret markers vs a plain fingerboard (from a practical pov, not aesthetic)
- Reliable build quality
- Low price point to meet a budget

- Good review ratings and customer service are also an added factor

Honestly, this ticks all of these boxes. Will it sound exactly like a 70s beaten-up old original JB that Jaco plied his trade on? No - but it's loads of fun to try out and you get moments where that unfretted, trebly growl cuts through; it's essentially that well-known-brand's template anyway, with decent pickups and a nice heaviness to it. (By the way, I have no idea why people are mentioning how heavy it is. It isn't - I have a handmade JB that is heavier, plus a 1975 original JB that is heavier still).

If you read any review on HB guitars people seem really impressed with how "ready to go" they are straight out of the shipping boxes. Yes, the same is true here. Apart from some buzzing somewhere up the fretboard (so maybe the action needs a little fiddling), mine only needed a tuning correction and that was it - ready to play.

The finish is excellent and the build quality is great, so that obviously is well done before packaging. I think I would have preferred solid colour options rather than the typical tobacco sunburst but the colour finish is the least important thing in my use case, which is home recording - it might matter to you if you are a gigging player.

There are nice HB-branded machine heads that haven't slipped (they don't really on bass guitars anyway) and a nice bridge with brass saddles. Tone pots are fine, no crackling, and there is no buzz at all when amplified so the bass must be well shielded and grounded.

One minor criticism is that I don't think the black scratchplate is 3-ply, or of very well-constructed plastic. It marked incredibly easily after a few minutes of test play. I think this must have been from where I thumb-slapped to just try out what that sounded like on a fretless (hit and miss, BTW), but my nails have marked the scratchplate. Since this is most likely replaceable with something better, this isn't the greatest issue, and we are paying waaaaay less for these instruments vs anything else, so no stars dropped for that.

Really, if you want to try out a well-built and great-sounding fretless for something different in your bass playing, this is the ideal place to start.