Well, I've got my neck. Actually, I've had it for about a week-and-a-half now. I wanted to play it for a while, giving it some studio, rehearsal, and gig time, before I posted here again.
First I need to follow up with the customer service related issues that started this thread in the first place. I wish I could say things worked out 100% perfectly, but unfortuately they did not. While I am very pleased with my new neck, there were a few annoyances that kind of stuck in my craw here.
A little more than two weeks after my telephone conversation with Steve at Moses (see previous posts) I received my neck. The length of time it took to get the neck was expected, as Moses did not have what I needed already in stock and I had to wait for this one to be made. If you recall my earlier posts, I originally ordered a Music Man/G&L scale neck, lined fretless, with no fingerboard overhang. I then received a Fender Jazz scale neck by mistake. The neck I have now is indeed a Music Man scale, however, it showed up with the fingerboard overhang. Having waited nearly two months since my original order, I opted to write to Steve to make sure I could remove the overhang myself without voiding the warranty. He agreed but, strangely, offered no apology or explanation, which was a little off-putting. One thing I've learned in my experience with him, though, is that he comes across better on the phone than in email. So whatever. I'm sure he meant to apologize for my having to complete the labor on the neck that should have been done at the factory and simply forgot. Removing the overhang was fairly easy. I just don't feel that, for $375, I should have had to do it. I also kind of expected a little more direct oversight by Steve on my neck, given all the trouble the first time around. This error--and others--suggests that the neck was simply whipped out by whoever he has doing his labor, and not much care was taken to make sure I got exactly what I ordered.
The neck also has/had some minor issues that were fairly easily remedied or otherwise accomodated, but, again, I don't believe I should be having to remedy anything based on the money I spent.
Here are all the issues I had to work with:
First off, when I removed the neck from its packaging, I noticed three long, hair-line scratches running lengthwise on the back of the neck. It looked like maybe there was a bad spot on the sandpaper when the neck was being smoothed and finished. I mentioned this to Steve in my email as well--again, not wanting to wait who knows how long to send my neck back to Moses--and asked if I could sand or buff the blemishes out somehow. He offered some very helpful suggestions as to how to go about this, but, again, offered no explanation or apology. Again, the fix was simple, but not something I had planned on doing.
Secondly, there was a spot perhaps a little smaller in diameter than a dime, and about the thickness of a thin pick on the back of the heel. It was a very obvious blemish that not only was asthetically displeasing, but in all likelihood would have effected the pitch of the neck had I left it there. Steve explained that this was probably the injection point for the neck, and a little more sandpaper and elbow grease took care of it. In my opinion this easily would have been caught had some final inspection taken place at the factory.
Thirdly, I ordered the headstock drilled for Sperzels, and basically it was. However, two of the holes were slightly too small, resulting in my being unable to fit the tuner bushings through the holes. I had to carefully widen the holes with a dremel to accomodate the tuners, and I expected the factory drilled holes to be more precise.
Fourthly, the nut slot depth is strange. I've seen both straight cut and curved or radiused slots in the years I've worked on instruments, but this one is cut deeper on the E string side than the G string side, resulting in sloping up of the nut when it's placed. I'm willing to allow that maybe this is intentional and I've just never seen it before, but in my experience it seems bizarre. I can hardly think of how they even managed to cut the slot this way, let alone any valuable purpose it might serve. To compensate for this factor I simply filed the nut at an angle on the bottom. Not terribly difficult, just annoying.
Fifthly--and this is not so much a complaint as a suggestion--Moses does not include a truss rod wrench with their necks. I think they should. A lot of us do our own set-ups, and we need that wrench. While the truss rod nut has enough space around it to work in a 5/16" socket, this means you have to remove the neck to adjust the truss rod. This is, in a word, silly. I just ordered a wrench off of Ebay for $9 including shipping. Yeah, I know, they always rob you on specialized tools. What are you going to do? I feel, for $375, a wrench should have been included. I mean, they throw in a truss rod wrench on cheap Chinese-made Squier basses. How outlandish a request could this be really?
Sixthly, in addition to the aforementioned issues, I had to clean up a lot of graphite dust around the truss rod nut and tuning holes before I even got started on the installation. Not a big deal at all, but here's the thing: The Fender neck I received by mistake several weeks earlier was essentially immaculate. This fact further led me to believe that my Music Man neck was kind of rushed through, without much attention paid to detail. Disappointing to say the least.
And lastly, when I sent the Fender Jazz neck back to Steve, he told me he would send a check with the new Music Man neck to reimburse me for shipping costs. He did not. I emailed him about it, and he thanked me for reminding him and said he'd mail one out. I still have not seen it after more than a week-and-a-half. I'm not going to throw a fit about it, but come on, man. You goof up like that, you pull out the old checkbook as you're reading the customer's email, and you take care of business. You do what's right. I shouldn't have to ask again.
So, alrighty then. Those are the negatives. In Steve's defense I will say that my impression from our converstation a couple of weeks ago is that the guy simply has WAY to much on his plate. Trying to run a business that is growing at the rate Moses is AND deal with every little customer service issue is unrealistic. Steve's a great guy. Moses makes a great product. But for every thousand necks made, someone is going to have an issue. This time it was me. It's not a big deal if you make it right. I know because I've been there. I've worked music retail and customer service for years, and I know how it should be done. If there was a way I could work for Moses from Colorado--dealing with, say, all these customer related matters--I'd fill out an application in a heartbeat. I believe in their product, but I think they need help. In my opinion, Steve needs to bite the proverbial bullet and add someone to the payroll, so that he can deal with growing the business, while someone else handles the more trivial matters such as those I've encountered.
Okay, the good stuff:
First and foremost, the neck sounds fantastic! I play fretless exclusively. I went with the graphite out of curiosity and the desire to play a fretless neck that would never wear out. I've played the same Frankenbass for the better part of the last twenty years, wearing through the original rosewood fingerboard (after pulling the frets and filling the slots myself) and then having it replaced with ebony. I've also experimented with some other wood necks--fretted and fretless--on the bass, so I've had the opportunity over the years to listen to this instrument in some widely varied mutations. The tone of the graphite is truly wonderful, and pretty much instantly made me feel like I had finally stumbled upon the sound I've been looking for all these years. On my bass--a simply alder body, with a brass ABM bridge and Lindy Fralin jazz pickup (for now)--the sonic quality is somewhere in the realm between maple and rosewood fingerboard necks. Much to my surprise, it's actually quite a bit warmer sounding than the maple neck/ebony fingerboard ever hoped to be. I always felt the ebony was rather brittle sounding, but I had gone with that material because rosewood wore down so quickly, and I was constantly sanding down the fingerboard. Ebony was a practical improvement, but I didn't enjoy the sound as much.
Anyway, another aspect of the sound that everyone talks about, and which I have found to be true, is the eveness of notes with no "dead spots." This kind of jumped out at me as I realized that for years I had been compensating for deficiencies in my wood necks by playing harder or softer on certain notes in order to get the right sound or balance of sounds. Now the bass seems to react in a much more natural way with my playing. If I dig in for a little honk, rip, and snap, this baby's right there with me. If I back off for those big, full, blooming notes, it's like all I have to do is think it and it's there.
Overall, the tone of the neck is everything I hoped it would be.
Feelwise I am very pleased, too. The neck has a nice "played in" feel to it, with the edges feeling very smooth and slightly rounded. I've never been a sweaty-handed player, so I'm not sure how others will feel about this, but to me, the back of the neck feels better than even some nice unfinished or satin finished necks I've played. It's got a very soft, low-friction feel that makes slides up and down the neck a breeze.
I've heard some people talk about the weight of these necks. I have to say I pretty much broke even here. I removed a maple/ebony neck with heavy Fender-style tuners, and replaced with the graphite neck and lightweight tuners. Overall, the bass lost half-a-pound. How much was hardware and how much was neck, I really don't know. But the balance of the bass feels better with this neck than it did with the old one, so I'm very please.
As far as the installation goes, I've heard some people complain about this, but I didn't have any trouble. As I alluded to earlier, I do all my own work. I also do repairs and setups as a side business, so I'm pretty comfortable with this sort of thing. I did have to go out and buy the 15/64" bit required to do the job, as I didn't have one handy, but that was no biggie. Once I had everything I needed, I pretty much just followed Steve's instructions to a tee, took my time (you won't get any second chances on this job) and came out just fine. The one area where I strayed from the instructions was that I drilled the holes with a hand-held drill rather than on a drill press. Though I had no problems at all doing this, I'm not sure I would recommend it unless you're very comfortable with your tools and very steady-handed. If you're thinking of going about it this way, I would recommend doing what I did, which is to first mark where the holes should be drilled using the drill bit technique mentioned in the instructions, then measure those marks to make sure you didn't slip up somewhere and knock things out of their proper line-up. Next, take a sharp tipped nail and a hammer and lightly tap a tiny pilot hole into the graphite. Then take a bit that is significantly smaller than the 15/64" one you'll use later and drill your pilot hole to its proper depth. Then and only then should you attempt to drill the holes the self-tapping sleeves will screw into. Go nice and slow. Have your drill bit marked with a piece of tape so as not to drill the holes too deep. Like I said, you won't get a second chance like you might with wood, where you can always dowel and redrill if you screw up.
If you can do this part of the job well, the rest is cake. The neck on my bass sits nice and snug in the pocket, and, with the bolts cinched down, doesn't budge even the slightest bit.
All in all, I'm pleased with my purchase. I love the neck. There's no question there at all. The only reservations I have had are related to service and general attention to detail on my neck. And I mention those reservations with the hope that my experience was an anomaly. Had I received a perfect neck that was exactly what I ordered two or three weeks after I first ordered it in November, I would have felt every penny spent had been worth it.
I don't think anyone should be scared off of doing business with Moses Graphite, one, because there necks are great and simply speak for themselves, and two, because my situation was exacerbated by bad timing with Steve being out of the country in December. But I felt I did have to be honest here about my experience--the good parts and the bad--for everyone's benefit.
Alright, enough of my ramblings. If anyone has any questions or comments at all, please, fire back here. With all that I've had to process through this experience, it's certainly possible I could have left out some pertinent detail that necesitates further follow-up.
Shake it easy.
Matt
MOSES Rocks 
