Grand Wazoo
Well-known member
I had to go to my head office to the centre of Town today for a board (read bored) meeting... but the good thing was that after the meeting I was able to take the rest of the day off and didn't need to go back to the port until tomorrow yay!!
What is a man to do in Central London but going for a bit of window shopping, so I headed for Tin Pan Alley (Denmark Street) to check out the music shops. And as I was looking through the glass of one shop I spotted a 1979 white / blonde Stingray with maple neck and decided to go in and ask if I could try it...
Of course, said them man, "you really should check out this great bass, this is the real thing, y'know? they are very rare to come by...", and blah blah... he was dying to sell it to me. I explained to him that I am an EBMM afficionado so he didn't really need to give me the rap and I was only passing by and not on a shopping spree, "is it still ok for me to try it?" I asked.
Sure, he said so he showed me to a nice and quite basement room, plugged it in a marshall bass amp and left me in peace...
My my my, what a very nice bass, 30 years old and with only a few minor battlescars, which compared to koogie's Bongo is almost untouched, the bridge had lost all his string dampers and the saddles were in pretty good conditions, rust free, the neck was very comfortable to play, you can see in these pictures that there is some evident wear on the fingerboard but it definately adds to the mojo factor and doesn't remove anything from the playability and feel. I loved it.
What surprised me the most about this bass was how powerful and punchy that one pickup sounded, remember this bass has only a 2 band eq, bass, treble and the volume pot, but you will be surprised at how responsive that preamp was. With all the settings in flat position, the bass had an incredible thundering midrange and the eq gave it a very wide spectrum range.
I asked how much he wanted for it, he said he was selling it on behalf of the owner and that the asking price was £1800 that including the original case, and that if I really really wanted to take it to day he could let it go for £1700 which is about $2763 or... €1986.
Now I am not interested in buying this as I am focused on getting the 25th Anniversary but do you all think it's worth all that cash? It did play very nice and only needed minor bridge & trussroad adjustment to remove a slight fret buzz on the higher frets, but otherwise it was a very wonderful and extremely playable instrument. A real piece of vintage art.
What a lovely experience that was
What is a man to do in Central London but going for a bit of window shopping, so I headed for Tin Pan Alley (Denmark Street) to check out the music shops. And as I was looking through the glass of one shop I spotted a 1979 white / blonde Stingray with maple neck and decided to go in and ask if I could try it...
Of course, said them man, "you really should check out this great bass, this is the real thing, y'know? they are very rare to come by...", and blah blah... he was dying to sell it to me. I explained to him that I am an EBMM afficionado so he didn't really need to give me the rap and I was only passing by and not on a shopping spree, "is it still ok for me to try it?" I asked.
Sure, he said so he showed me to a nice and quite basement room, plugged it in a marshall bass amp and left me in peace...
My my my, what a very nice bass, 30 years old and with only a few minor battlescars, which compared to koogie's Bongo is almost untouched, the bridge had lost all his string dampers and the saddles were in pretty good conditions, rust free, the neck was very comfortable to play, you can see in these pictures that there is some evident wear on the fingerboard but it definately adds to the mojo factor and doesn't remove anything from the playability and feel. I loved it.
What surprised me the most about this bass was how powerful and punchy that one pickup sounded, remember this bass has only a 2 band eq, bass, treble and the volume pot, but you will be surprised at how responsive that preamp was. With all the settings in flat position, the bass had an incredible thundering midrange and the eq gave it a very wide spectrum range.
I asked how much he wanted for it, he said he was selling it on behalf of the owner and that the asking price was £1800 that including the original case, and that if I really really wanted to take it to day he could let it go for £1700 which is about $2763 or... €1986.
Now I am not interested in buying this as I am focused on getting the 25th Anniversary but do you all think it's worth all that cash? It did play very nice and only needed minor bridge & trussroad adjustment to remove a slight fret buzz on the higher frets, but otherwise it was a very wonderful and extremely playable instrument. A real piece of vintage art.
What a lovely experience that was
