lemmywinks

Ah see I'm a sucker for spalted wood! Prefer the more subtle examples though rather than the 90% resin ones.

The resin thing isn't a new idea (been used on furniture before guitar builders caught on) and is actually quite cool IMO, looks very striking if done properly. Execution on that RockBass is poor though and it's only been done to disguise the jack rout, who knows what else it's hiding.

If you were going to do this to a Jack Casady then surely you'd pick the gold one?

Is the bridge centred correctly?

This one also has it, looks like an '04 same year and model as the one in the OP: Every other one I've seen (including my old single pickup 5er) had the regular Warwick style one with the access cover and model name.

Seller knows it's some sort of Rockbass. Interstingly (actually not that interesting but whatever) some of the early Rockbass Streamers did come with that truss rod cover and were changed to the German style ones later so that's most likely not aftermarket.

And the scrubbed off RockBass logo with the fake truss rod cover, it's intentional deception. I've asked the seller if it's a proper Warwick or a RockBass, will see what the reply is.

I quite like the Marcus Miller ethos where he has some input into the design of the Sire basses and Markbass amps, ok it's basically selecting eq points but in both cases they've resulted in a better product I think. The basses were designed as a solid, low cost platform for students, not as his own personal signature model which is something I can get onboard with. Although somewhere I do have a signature Jimi Hendrix strap I bought for next to nothing in a rush as I needed a cheap strap, still look at it and think "why?"

Ghost building is a real thing, I would be surprised if the signature production guitars (Fender etc, not posh brands) used by artists aren't outsourced or masterbuilt by an entirely different (and more costly) set of hands than the ones we scrubs can buy. If the late Ed Roman was telling even 5% of the truth (big stretch but bear with me!) then it's always been smoke and mirrors.

There's a bid on it so I reported it as someone is gonna get stung here.

It's a disguised gen 1 Rockbass. Truss rod cover is fake (original had a clip on truss access cover), there's no rout for a 2 piece bridge so that means it could only be a German Streamer Standard Bolt On or a 1st gen Rockbass. Neck is maple so not the German SSBO so will be a 1st gen Rockbass with the large Fender-style jack rout sneakily disguised by the epoxy modification. You can buy German Streamer Standard Bolt On for that much which will have an ovangkol neck and was built in the Warwick factory. This is worth £150 tops. EDIT: Also has the RB serial number so that's a bit of a clue! 🤣

Will do.

Yeah that's the one I was looking at, seems like it's gone now. Very nice looking basses.

I would get the used MTD, is that the one that's been floating around on FB for ages? A lot of bass for the money and less of a gamble although I suppose the new basses could be returned.

A decent gigbag is always appreciated, something that will protect the bass but also be easy to transport. The TGI Extreme ones are reasonably priced: https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/TGI-Extreme-Series-Bass-Guitar-Gig-Bag/2WP4?origin=product-ads&gclid=Cj0KCQiAiJSeBhCCARIsAHnAzT82y_TUXZ6_Cwqz6-8_GQyfV2zZHjrjdkNTnX9CE3RdOlLSqTLN8IYaApI3EALw_wcB Also decent cables that will last decades are a good buy, quality doesn't have to mean expensive: https://www.designacable.com/musician-leads/instrument-leads.html/jack-to-jack/designacable-custom-shop-premium-braided-guitar-cable-van-damme-neutrik.html

Puzzling that such work has been done on a bass so cheap to just replace like for like, maybe the owner who had the work done really loved it?

Those old Magnas are decent basses, really undesirable though so sell for peanuts, £300 for a mint example is living in dreamland let alone for one in this state. I think the neck is a newer 24 fret replacement (older ones had 22 and the bridge/pups were further back on the body) so the pickups and bridge have been moved to compensate. You can see filled in bridge screw holes where the old one was located. So this will be a newer Chinese neck (will have had the large ARIA block logo) on what I'm guessing is an older Korean body.

Just this into wired IEMs:

I would get the SIre M2 in your situation, not going to get a better preamp in any other budget bass IMO. Avoid the fake Bartolini in the Corts, the MkI pickups sound better passive than with the accompanying preamp. They made them (and also the C series, no Ultralites though) with MarkBass licensed preamps for a while which might be an option if you can find one, Corts are great basses and I loved my B5 aside from the preamp.

Think they use rebranded Clevos so should be decent quality.

There's an interview from a few years ago with the head honcho from Harley Benton (I've linked to it somewhere on here before if you want to search for it) where he says they had trouble sourcing genuine Wilkinson parts so had to stop using them for a while, if that guy is struggling then we have no hope!

The app is pretty good, either that or the website works fine for me. Wilkinsons on AE (or any reseller site) are likely to be fake. Doesn't necessarily mean they'll be junk or even just usable, I have what I suspect to be non-genuine Wilkinsons on my fretless which are actually very nice tuners and I have no intention of changing them.

Bought a few bridges on AliExpress over the years and always been impressed with how solid they are, had a couple of high mass Korean made Fender style units (GuitarFamily), a Schaller clone and also used a Zinc Alloy 5 string bridge on my Cort C5. The Zinc Alloy one is solid and has been on the bass for 4 years now so I wouldn't worry. A lot of parts you see on there turn up on production basses, in fact when I was looking for a replacement bridge for my Sire there was a load of Ibanez stamped units on there! Although those saddles look almost identical to the stock BTB ones I would check the slots are wide enough for bass strings, looks like they are intended for guitar strings on the pictures and may need filing out.

Good that they're bringing the Black Ice finish to the 5 string EHB but they really need to let the Tropical Sea Floor one out of Japan, keep ogling them on eBay.

They could just put T1 pickups on there and have a great sounding bass which would probably be cheaper. Don't know why they (well Cort really) keep slapping a Bart license on such flavourless pickups and preamps.