Dionne | soldguitars

(SOLD)

2000 Warwick Corvette Standard (MIG) Bass

"Dionne"

I'm really pleased to have found this one. Now let's not mess each other about ... I'm not a 'proper' bass player, its no secret. I bought my 7-string bass ('Thor') as a big-assed cool-as-shit version of a 7-string lead guitar. I've used that for years simply because its fantastic to play lead guitar stuff on such a bloody HUGE neck with bass string spacing and strings the thickness of scaffold poles. However, dabbling in bassey stuff stirred my interest in what it would be like to start taking bass stuff a little more seriously. The truth IS, that if you keep away from the techy or flashy stuff, playing bass is an absolute bloody doddle. Its the kind of instrument that (even with my guitar abilities, which I'm happy to describe as 'intermediate') can be picked up and you can immediately keep up with shit. You know the key, you know the song, so off you go. Great fun, no stress ... that's what playing is meant to be about, right? Excellent. However, because I'm an unfathomable dick, pretty soon after getting my '7' I started trying to get flash. Low-talent versions of Steve Harris-type gallops, Flea-esque slaps and pops, and I got a little hooked. SO, this is my response to that. I'm going to take bass seriously for a while and see what gives. You never know, I might start picking this up in preference to my 6-string gear!

So. It is a Warwick Corvette Standard, with a beautiful 2-piece swamp ash body (just LOOK at that grain!) with a 'honey violin oil' finish, an ovangkol neck (whatever the hell THAT is) and fantastic bell-brass frets with the cool hidden fret tangs. The hidden tang thing means that those little (occasionally sharp) bits of the frets that dig into the board are recessed, so that all you feel is wood. Slinky. What else. Yeah. The production of these was moved from Germany to Korea a few years ago, so this (which was made on 29 March 2000) escaped by a little while and was made in Germany. Its no big deal really, as the Korean ones are nice (... actually, they're VERY nice), but I'm kinda snobby about stuff like that. I know, I know ... but if I bought a Korean one, I'd still want a German one. I can't help it. Actually the German ones and the Korean ones are priced VERY similarly ... I hear that Warwick were losing a bunch of money on every German Corvette they made for a while, but are now making a profit on the Korean ones. Good for them. Electronics are two passive MEC single coils, so the combination of those and the swamp ash body make this good and bright, which is nice ... that helps to stop things getting too woofy and farty.

I picked this up as a bit of a bargain (in the scheme of things) ... you should know by now that I can't RESIST a bargain. I understand that that the Corvette Standard was valued far higher than it is now, until Warwick released the Corvette $$ (referred to as the 'Double Buck' due to its twin humbuckers). That bass is pretty similar to this one, but the pickups do all sorts of humbuckery stuff, they split into singles and are switchable between passive and active ... so the $$ does all the tones, whereas this one does fewer of them. Whatever. This sounds good enough to stop me worrying too much about messing with the knobs ... once you've dialled in THAT Warwick growl, you leave the knobs as they are.

The downside? This made me want a rack full of Warwicks. Damn it.