I've had this bass now for a several months and I now finally got around to writing a review.
Let's start with construction. This bass feels substantial and solid. Nothing is loose or rattling, nothing feels cheap or flimsy. The neck is comfortable and slim, as a J-bass should be. The lightly coated natural finish looks fantastic and there were no cosmetic issues with the bass whatsoever.
The tuners feel good and solid, pleasant to operate. Tuning stability is rock solid. It came with sky-high action, like most HB instruments, but that was easily remedied and I was able to get the action nice and low. It's very smooth and comfortable to play.
I previously owned a short scale P-bass (also HB) and compared to that, this bass has a lot more clarity and "spank" in the tone, being two single coils instead of a humbucker after all. It has the classic setup of a volume pots for each pickup and master tone, but I would've preferred it the other way around: master volume and two tones. Maybe I'll mod it like that one day. Overall, it sounds great and there's a wide variety of different tones available, from a really warm and woofy sounds from the neck pickup with the tone rolled all the way back, to funky spanky madness with the bridge pickup tone all the way open. And everything in between, of course. Zero need for updating the pickups.
Unfortunately there were a couple of minor issues. When I first received the bass, it had solid fretwork, but unfortunately during the winter months, it developed pretty severe fret sprout. Like, finger bleedingly severe. Admittedly the winter was pretty harsh here and I don't have a humidifier at my place, so the air got pretty dry. But yeah, that can happen even with instruments costing several thousands of dollars and filing fret ends down is really easy and and an essential skill especially anyone into more budget friendly instruments. I worked the fret ends over after the winter and it's all good again. I doubt I'll have to worry about it again.
Oh, and one final thing. The pickguard comes covered with a plastic film that's basically impossible to remove completely without also completely removing the knobs. Since removing the knobs is quite a hassle, I've had scratchy pieces of plastic under them for months now. However, that's mildly irritating.
But don't let these small complaints detract you. This is a seriously good instrument. Not just "for the money". It's just a solid instrument, great sounding and a joy to play.