Harley Benton JB-40FL 3-Tone Sunburst

Ok, I had bad luck... The D tuning peg is wobbling and has a few loose turns. When I switched the bridge, under the old bridge plate - surprise! Two screws were stripped off... They hadn't bothered to extract them, to fill the holes with wood of the same kind and to re-drill new ones.
Nonetheless, all this trouble can be easily fixed if you do have some experience.
The instrument itself is very beautiful and well finished. Although it weighs 5 kilos, let's not forget it's ash not basswood.
Probably not "swamp ash", but other heavier species such as green ash, white ash or black ash. Swamp ash is a pretty expensive wood and even if it is very similar to hard ash in appearance its tone is different. Hard ash guitar wood tone offers more treble and less warmth and it also delivers a good sustain.
The neck profile is modern "C" and measures approx 22.26 mm (.876") at the 2nd fret and 25.41(1.000") at the 12th fret. A little bit thicker than the standard fretless one, but nonetheless comfortable to play.
The pau ferro fingerboard came very dry but this can be easily fixed with a few drops of BOILED linseed oil after you clean it with turpentine essence. I recommend flattwounds because the roundwounds strings leave marks on the fingerboard even if you don't slap them like crazy.
The neck came with no relief at all, but this too can be fixed if you know how to do it. If not, check with a luthier.
The DCR of the pickups don't match with the specs on the Roswell site. Mine are as follows: The bridge pickup is 7.44k while the neck pickup is 7.20k. Both have different values compared to the ones of the Harley Benton JB 75 which I also own. Here, the bridge pickup DCR is 7.30k and the neck pickup is 7.24k. The Roswell site gives 7.82k for the bridge pickup and 7.55k for the neck one.
The pots are nothing special but work well. The volume pots begin to work at the end of the range while the tone pot is doing his job as it should.
The bridge plate is solid enough and the barrels are made of steel while the HB 75 has the brass version. Pay attention! The groves of the barrels need to be deburred as all of them - at least mine - have burrs which result in a sitarlike sound of the strings.
The wood grain of the body is very nice and the finish is really great. The neck is satin finished and has a very pleasant feel. Still, you can sand it with some 1500 grit sandpaper without fear of taking the coating off. The feel of the neck will be even smoother.
So, in conclusion, even if you invest more money to change the tuners - which are decent, the nut (which sounds OK even if it is not made of bone), the pickups, the electronics and the bridge - if you are really picky - you will not pay the amount of money you would pay for brands that made history, and you will still have an instrument in the same league.
With some tweaks and a proper setup according to your taste, the instrument is amazing and sounds great for the money you pay for it!
I strongly recommend to give it a try!
Also, thumbs up for Thomann and its personnel! I always buy with great confidence and satisfaction from them!

As other reviewers have said, this is just excellent for the money - it would be good value at two or three times the price. It is a very nice looking instrument, the fit and finish is pretty good (albeit a bit rough in places), it plays very well and it sounds terrific.

I have the fretted version (the JB-75MN) and bought the fretless to see how close it would sound to an upright bass, since I play mostly jazz. The answer is not very. I have ordered some Thomastik flat wound strings (which cost half as much as the guitar) and will report back if that makes a significant improvement. I'm hopeful because the Thomastik strings I have on my archtop guitar really brought out the classic jazz sound.

I'm not a bass player so I was expecting the fretless to be hard erto play than the JB-75, but I immediately found it to be easier. The neck seems to be slimmer- it isn't actually, I think it's just that there are no frets to clear and so the string height is lower, and it is very low. I found no problem with getting a clean sound except on the first string, which buzzes a bit. I raised the saddle, which helped a bit. I noticed that there is almost no relief in the neck to I tried adjusting the truss rod, but that made no difference at all, so I set it back to the way it came from the factory.

The fretless sounds better! It has a fuller, warmer sound than the JB-75. The improvement in sound could just be due to the fact that there are no frets or it could be due to one or more of the design differences. The pickups are different - Roswell vs Wilkinson, the fretless has a black wood fretboard vs maple, the bridge is different, with steel vs brass saddles and the fretless neck has a skunk stripe.

There is one issue that I would like to raise which is that the strings do not align properly with the pickups and the neck. The bass string is nearly 1cm from the edge of the fretboard at the end of the neck. I thought at first this was a manufacturing problem but after taking some measurements, I am pretty sure it is because the bridge is too narrow. It has 19mm separation between the strings, whereas the JB-75 has 20mm, and everything aligns perfectly on the JB-75. The photographs on the Thomann website hide this because they are taken at an angle. It's not a big deal, but I don't understand why they made that design change.

Update, May 2021.
I forgot to feedback my experiences changing the strings for Thomastik Infeld flat wounds. Just do it!! I know they cost half as much as the guitar but the difference is unbelievable. The JB-40FL now sounds much more like an upright bass and with the ability on a fretless guitar to slide into the notes, It has quite convincing upright bass character that is ideal for jazz.