Harley Benton MB-5LH SBK

I purchased my MB-5LH back in February and have only used it lightly around the house. Fast forward now to September, it came time for a string replacement. Both the E and G string tuning gears stripped while removing the old strings, rendering the whole bass useless. From what I gathered, this seems to be an issue with this model. This is my second Harley Benton bass (my other is a red PB-50), and the quality on this one is so much worse that it's not even funny. Aside from the tuning gears, the matte black finish is flaking off in a number of different spots, the frets are very sharp from about the tenth fret up, and several frets are actually sticking up from the fret board (looks like they weren't pressed in properly/glued down well). All in all, I am extremely disappointed with this bass. If I was a beginner and this was my first bass, this would be a huge turn off for me.

Truss Rod needed slackening off and there is still very little relief in the neck. The strings were actually touching all the frets, making the instrument unplayable out of the box. The fret end were very sharp and needed dressing. The intonation was out and the strings are very harsh sounding and feel like sandpaper. The machine heads are very cheap and difficult to get the strings in tune. It's about what I expected from a very cheap instrument. I've spend several hours trying ti get it playable, if I can't get anymore relief in the truss rod, it will have to be returned. Maybe I just got a bad one!