Hi everybody,
it's time to ask the experienced Talkbass community for some input:
I just moved to NY for studying and since I couldn't bring my own bass from Europe I decided to rent or buy something after my arrival. The first bass I tried was this 1956 Kay C-1 for 2200 $ which I tried today. The overall condition was pretty ok, some dings and scratches here and there but no cracks as far as I could see. The bass has been serviced by David Gage and has a Gage bridge with adjusters. The only major downside was that the neck joint was damaged once so the neck has been glued in by Gage and seems to be stable, hard to tell if this spot will remain something to worry about.
The bass was strung with pretty old Spirocores, I am not even sure if they were "mittel" or "weich" but the sound and volume was pretty ok on the A, D and G string, plenty of punch and pretty focused. Bowing also worked surprisingly well despite the strings. The only thing that bothered me was the E string response, not arco but pizz, it didn't quite match sound and volume of the other strings, thumpy and very little sustain. Probably the age of the strings (the owner said it might have been around 3 years since he put them on his bass) is part of the problem but still I am curious this is a common sound "feature" of Kays or if it might be a sign of any kind of bad setup or damage. I guess that I wouldn't leave Spiros on the bass since I practice arco a lot, so maybe Obligatos would nice. These are the pictures the guy sent me in advance, not the best quality but they represent well what the bass actually looks like:
Thanks in advance for every bit of advice, I know that I'm not the first one to post that sort of thread, I hope not everybody has already had enough of "is this a good deal" topics...
Johannes
