So ever since they came out a few years ago I've always wanted one of the Charvel Pro-Mod San Dimas PJs in Mystic Blue.
I played two different examples at shops over the years. One at Nashville Used Music had pretty good fit & finish but it needed a setup BAD, and I wasn't quite sure that truss rod tweaking alone would get it to where I wanted it. It also had some deep dings on the bottom rim where some dope had mishandled it prior, and it suffered from a preamp with just a little more than normal self-noise or a lack of grounding. I showed them the dings and asked if they would come off the price a bit and they wouldn't even take $10 off the $1k price. Back on the wall it went.
Later I played a blue one at Guitar Center in Nashville and it was a great player but needed a fair bit of attention to the fret end finishing and was already cracked on both sides of the neck pocket in that little spot where Fenders frequently crack. Passed again.
Well, it looks like Sweetwater is trying to get rid of them now (I had already missed them at $650-700 at Franklin Guitar Works on Reverb), dropping the price to 899, and another 10% off Fender stuff, so $810. They had one blue one left. I called on Friday an asked if they could come down any further on the price, and brobeans got it to $789. Fair enough. I placed the order, but asked them to hold it until Tuesday so the bass didn't sit in a freezing trailer through the weekend snow storm that blew through. I picked Tuesday to ship so that any backlog in freight from the weekend would hopefully have a chance to work itself out. Cool. All good.
Well... Sunday afternoon my buddy sent me this deal he saw at Adorama:
DADGUM! $500!!!! And ONLY for this color. :/ I've owned three pearl white cars, and after blue/green tones, it's my next favorite paint finish. What was I supposed to do?! I HAD to order it!
So now I have two Charvels on the way to my house. I'm assuming these are being discontinued and we'll see something new to take their place from Fender/Charvel at NAMM.
Sunday evening, after I ordered the platinum pearl San Dimas, I thought about just settling for the white and canceling the blue one from Sweetwater before it ships, saving nearly $300... but then I thought about the experiences with the two examples I had played. I decided to leave both orders as-is and just wait to see what shows up. If they are both excellent, GREAT! I'll keep them both. If both are turds, I'll send both back.
But if one is clearly better than the other (meaning one has issues I can't quickly remediate and the other doesn't) then I will send the worst offender back and keep the other. I don't normally like doing stuff like this... with very rare exception if I buy something it's with the intent to keep it even if I'm not thrilled with it, unless it's just grossly defective or absolutely awful. Facebook marketplace is there for salvaging the rest of my poor decisions, haha! We'll see what shakes out, and I'll report back when they arrive.
I played two different examples at shops over the years. One at Nashville Used Music had pretty good fit & finish but it needed a setup BAD, and I wasn't quite sure that truss rod tweaking alone would get it to where I wanted it. It also had some deep dings on the bottom rim where some dope had mishandled it prior, and it suffered from a preamp with just a little more than normal self-noise or a lack of grounding. I showed them the dings and asked if they would come off the price a bit and they wouldn't even take $10 off the $1k price. Back on the wall it went.
Later I played a blue one at Guitar Center in Nashville and it was a great player but needed a fair bit of attention to the fret end finishing and was already cracked on both sides of the neck pocket in that little spot where Fenders frequently crack. Passed again.
Well, it looks like Sweetwater is trying to get rid of them now (I had already missed them at $650-700 at Franklin Guitar Works on Reverb), dropping the price to 899, and another 10% off Fender stuff, so $810. They had one blue one left. I called on Friday an asked if they could come down any further on the price, and brobeans got it to $789. Fair enough. I placed the order, but asked them to hold it until Tuesday so the bass didn't sit in a freezing trailer through the weekend snow storm that blew through. I picked Tuesday to ship so that any backlog in freight from the weekend would hopefully have a chance to work itself out. Cool. All good.
Well... Sunday afternoon my buddy sent me this deal he saw at Adorama:
DADGUM! $500!!!! And ONLY for this color. :/ I've owned three pearl white cars, and after blue/green tones, it's my next favorite paint finish. What was I supposed to do?! I HAD to order it!
So now I have two Charvels on the way to my house. I'm assuming these are being discontinued and we'll see something new to take their place from Fender/Charvel at NAMM.
Sunday evening, after I ordered the platinum pearl San Dimas, I thought about just settling for the white and canceling the blue one from Sweetwater before it ships, saving nearly $300... but then I thought about the experiences with the two examples I had played. I decided to leave both orders as-is and just wait to see what shows up. If they are both excellent, GREAT! I'll keep them both. If both are turds, I'll send both back.
But if one is clearly better than the other (meaning one has issues I can't quickly remediate and the other doesn't) then I will send the worst offender back and keep the other. I don't normally like doing stuff like this... with very rare exception if I buy something it's with the intent to keep it even if I'm not thrilled with it, unless it's just grossly defective or absolutely awful. Facebook marketplace is there for salvaging the rest of my poor decisions, haha! We'll see what shakes out, and I'll report back when they arrive.
The one on the right now wears the Ernie Ball Group 2.5 flats. It's a lot of fun having both flavors of string on the same bass!
Oh, BTW, I did have to shield it thoroughly but now it's one of my quietest (and fiercest) basses.
