lowdown Posted March 26, 2008 Share Posted March 26, 2008 [quote name='Crazykiwi' post='164098' date='Mar 26 2008, 09:53 PM']The bass arrived today. Delivered without a case - not even a gig bag. Luckily the courier was careful! So the good news is that the neck is pretty good, particularly for an '84 bass. The neck needs a bit of a shim (more tricky with a 4 bolt neck because of the lack of a microtilt feature) but otherwise looks OK. The bass is pretty good nick otherwise, even still has the crusty old foam on the mutes! The bad news however is that the bridge side coil in the neck humbucker doesn't work. I've tested the connections with a multimeter and the windings around the coil appear to have broken at some point. The other coil is reading fine so it looks like I'm either going to have to get the coil rewound to the same impedance OR get a replacement sabre neck pickup from somewhere. I've asked the seller (who was selling it on behalf of his Son who is overseas at the moment) what he suggests we do about the extra cost the coil repair is going to require...[/quote] Good one Steve... A bit of TLC and you should have a good one there... Garry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ped Posted March 26, 2008 Share Posted March 26, 2008 Just how good is the neck exactly? Perfectly straight, or a bit of relief, how much are we talkin' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwi Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 [quote name='ped' post='164146' date='Mar 26 2008, 10:37 PM']Just how good is the neck exactly? Perfectly straight, or a bit of relief, how much are we talkin'[/quote] There's a tiny amount of relief, the frets have been poorly crowned as well so the bass could probably do with a stoning around the dusty end of the neck. I think the bass is probably capable of lower action than the Cutlass 1 which is good news. I opened up the neck pocket to find two sets of makers initials in pencil and no date stamp (which apparently did happen sometimes). The initials were E.V. and G.G. (Geoff Gould?). If it was inspected by Geoff Gould, its unexpected - maybe he got back into quality control after too many duff necks were produced. I couldn't see any initials apart from a "T" in red marker on the Cutlass 1 pocket. I had a closer look at the Cutlass 1 pocket and I wondered if the bass might have actually been resprayed black over an original white finish given the thickness of the white "undercoat" which also had scratchmarks from rough sanding. That could mean both basses should be white! The seller of has offered me some compensation which might actually cover the cost of a coil rewind by Andy at Wizard Pickups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
budget bassist Posted March 28, 2008 Share Posted March 28, 2008 If you want the genuine thing there's a [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Musicman-Sabre-bass-body-and-pickups-Music-Man-1986-USA_W0QQitemZ190209878007QQihZ009QQcategoryZ4713QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem"]sabre body[/url] on ebay at the moment with the pickups in it, you could take the pickups and sell the rest on. Might cost you a bit though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwi Posted April 4, 2008 Share Posted April 4, 2008 Got the pickup back from Andy today - 48 hour turnaround! Stunning service! Anyway, I fitted it this afternoon and the bass is good to gig tomorrow. I'm really liking the firm sound of this thing although the bridge pickup doesn't have the same depth as a stingray. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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