Jeroen wrote:
The Warwick arrived on monday, in dire need of a thorough setup! The action at the 12th fret was almost 1/2"! Can you believe it? It looked like it hasn't been played in a very long time. It's a 2003, baseball bat-era Streamer LX5 with solid flamed maple body, ovangkol neck with wenge fingerboard, the old plastic Just-A-Nut II, MEC J-style pickups and MEC 2-band EQ with active-passive switching. My initial response after seeing the insanely high action was "Oh crap, I just hope nothing is wrong with it" but thankfully the bass appears to be built like a tank and responded very well to every adjustment I made, to the trussrod and to the bridge. It's incredibly easy to set up! I love it.
The bass looks beautiful, the transparent high gloss Nirvana Black almost looks like a dark greenish gray, much unlike many transparent black finishes that tend to lean towards a purplish or brownish glow. The flame of the body is not exactly in-your-face, but the beautiful finish gives it a lot of depth so it really looks amazing. I'm no fan of gold hardware, I may at some point replace it with black, but for now I'll leave it untouched.
The neck is huge, but I have big hands so that's nothing I can't handle. Plays pretty well actually. I like the very flat fingerboard radius and the body ergonomics of the Streamer model, it's very comfortable both sitting down and standing up with the bass on a strap.
The tone is very punchy and fairly bright, thanks to the ovangkol neck and solid maple body and the positioning of the pickups (close to the bridge). The tone is really snappy and agressive, I think it will work really well in my metalband! It's coming with me tonight for its first rehearsal. Can't wait!
And the best part? I paid only €500
