I recently wrote about the state of my music equipment. One of the things I was dissatisfied with was my bass guitars. Neither one was making me too happy. Well, today I fixed one of them.
I bought my Warwick Rockbass Corvette $$ 5-string bass used off Ebay. I was in the middle of James and the Giant Peach production and I impulse bought it as a reward for learning and playing all that complicated music. I paid about $600 for it plus shipping and tax. That’s a good used price, especially since it had never really been owned. My guess is that it had hung on the wall in a music store all its life. It even still had the plastic film on it that explained what each knob does. It was a showroom floor item.
When I received it, I immediately knew why no one had bought it–it played terribly. Specifically, the string action was way to high off the fretboard. It was a lot of work to play it. I took it to the music store across the street from my apartment and asked them to fix it.
When I went back a few days later they handed it over to me with an apology: they couldn’t really do much with it because, they said, it had a twisted neck. Sorry. Oh, well. Them’s the breaks.
I was heartbroken. Still, the bass sounded like a house on fire so… I lived with it. For two years.
Then I started watching a YouTube channel called Dave’s World of Fun Stuff. There are at least eight years of videos on this channel. Each one is from 10 to 30 minutes long, and consists of just one subject: fixing guitars. Each video is a different guitar with a different set of problems that Dave walks us through as he fixes them.
After about a week of watching Dave, I decided that maybe I could improve this instrument. Even if I couldn’t totally fix it and make it play like the bass guitar it had been meant to, maybe I could just make it a little better. So I started buying tools.
When I finally had everything I needed, I went for it.
An electric guitar is basically a couple of piece of wood, a handful of metal parts, a bit of plastic here and there, and some magnets. It isn’t that complicated. But these pieces have to be mechanically adjusted so that they work together just right. In some cases the measurements you have to make to do it right is in the thousandths of an inch.
Once I knew what I was doing, once I knew what my measurement targets were, and most of all once I trusted the process, I won. My Warwick now plays great. The neck relief is set at about 14 thousandths of an inch. The nut action is about 20 thou. The string height is about six 64ths of an inch at the B string and about 5 64ths at the G. I even set the intonation for each string.
I didn’t even imagine that it would turn out this well. All I was hoping for was a little improvement. But what I got was a full on fix. This thing plays like an instrument you’d pay $1,200 for. (Which is what I think it’s new price once was.)
About the music store. I like the store. I will continue to go there and spend money. But I will never again ask them to set up an instrument for me. Not only did they mislead me about my Warwick bass, they did the same thing to me with my Fender acoustic. They said it couldn’t be made to play better. A couple turns of the truss rod later and it plays quite well, thank you very much.
Anyway, sometimes life is good. You learn. You do. You win.