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Are Warwicks Any Good??

#61
Wrong so wrong! Dont get me wrong when i got it i loved it up front! But Iam a very picky pro-bass player that has to have the perfect sound for a song! What i meant was you get the warwick and you have tons of diff sounds that can come from that puppy! Not like most basses when you have them thats the sound you are stuck with! Kinda like a fender you buy a fender it sounds just like it did in the music store for the rest of it s life! When i played fenders i could use them on a good slow blues jam but if you wanted a good slap tone its not there! But the warwick has awsome slap then just use the knobs and create a awsome jass sound! Most basses sound like the same bass no matter what you do! I wonder how long you have been playing bass if you said that you should know what the sound is in the music store because you can never tell in there! Usually they are set up bad! And as far as amps go what do you mean? I only buy a good head that has a equalizer on it! I would have to spend weeks in there non-stop adjusting it to get the best sound? Maybe if you buy a little combo amp is what you meant!
 
#62
OK OK, First things first. 16 years playing bass. 10 years experience as a sound engineer (live and studio). Not just a weeked hack either, I've toured extensively in North America (mainly Canada) and Europe with several bands. Currently doing a degree in electrical engineering. You didn't say you loved it from the start (originally) you said that it took you a couple of months to get a tone you liked out of it. Just a little misunderstanding;). However, I totally stand by what I said about basses. If you pick up a bass and it doesn't sound great immediately it ain't gonna sound great. Let me caveat that by saying the instrument needs to be properly set up and you need to be somewhere where you can give it a good critical listen. Listen to it acoustically by putting your ear to it. If it doesn't sound good like that nothing you do to it electronically is going to change it. The source of the sound is the wood. When you plug it in with the controls all flat it should sound like it does acoustically. If it's radically different, the electronics are really coloring the sound. As for amps, if you plug your bass into an amp and you have to shag around with it for half an hour to get it to sound right then it's not the amp for you. For example, I can screw with a Peavey for hours and still not get a sound I like out of it, but I plug into my SVT and it sounds amazing with everything flat. If an amp doesn't sound good flat it doesn't sound good. That doesn't mean you shouldn't tweak your settings to shape tones (on the bass or amp) but you should have a basic sound you're happy with, with everything set flat. Then you work from there. If you have to radically eq stuff to get a decent sound you're in trouble. This is what I meant earlier. BTW, I get a very punchy and fat slap sound out of my US Jazz bass, as do a lot of other people :D. I'm not saying that you don't out of your Warwick, just that it is indeed there in Fenders.
 
#63
Very cool to see another person with lots of playing under there belt! Ya i agree with the amps its just i have a certain tone i use on all our cds! So when it comes to buying new gear it takes a long time to get the tone i want! Kinda like i got a hartke 3500 head and could not stand the hartke cabs! But the head was great! The cab sounded like i was playing through a tin can! So i went with the swr goliath 4-10 cab! I just couldnt get that awsome slap tone out of the fenders! Dont get me wrong i love some fenders! I have a late 60s american frettless p-bass i just love to use in the studio! But generally if iam going to go to a studio to do work for somebody i just brieng my warwick because i can get so many tones from it! I am also a electronics engineer ive worked for La Barge electronics making wiring harnesses for NASA and militery for years now! That crap is good to have under your belt! Well somtimes until your not doing sound at a gig and the opening bad breaks somthing and you have to fix it! Ive been thinking of charging a .50 cents for each inch of soldier i use for them! Maybe after a couple years of that crap i can afford to buy the new warwick dolphin! HEHE
 
#64
Cool, perfectionist tweaking in the studio is one thing but having to screw around a lot to get a sound is another entirely. Hey, I'm using a Goliath with my 76 SVT! great cab. It gives me just the right combination of SVT grunt and SWR sizzle. I've got a lot of working experience with electronics, you kinda have to to be in the sound racket. Although field repair is very stressfull. Picture mixing a band in front of 15000 people with 8 strips out of the console that cost as much as a house, repairing the components that blew up because it got rained on the night before. arrgh! I'm hoping to get into pro audio design when I get my degree and maybe into bass amp design....:D
 
#65
Originally posted by eric atkinson
And also warwicks are not for the begginer bass player! Alot of people here that say they dont like them are new bass players!
Click to expand...

Well, I have been playing for over 20 years, and I don't like Warwicks. They are well made, but I don't like the feel or the tone.

So it's not just beginners that don't like them.
 
#67
:D
Just got my new Corvette FNA today. I took back my Peavey Millenium Plus 4 and came home with the Warwick.
As Eric Atkinson said, if you make some adjustments to your amp, the tones out of the Warwick are unreal. And the slap tones out of this thing are KILLER.
If anyone would have asked me a few weeks ago what I thought of Warwicks, I would have told them I would never buy one. I had played several and none of them ever really turned me on. (Probably due mostly to improper set up--I should have taken more time and had at least one of them set up the way I like them; I probably would have owned one already!!) Well, I tried out the FNA a couple of times in the past week, had them set it up the way I liked it, and came back one more time today, played it again, and took it home.
 
#70
Well, after I got it yesterday, I went and practiced with my band for about 6 hours (with breaks and stuff that equalled out to about 4 and a half hours of playing, and most of that was on the Warwick). I was actually surprised at how much I LIKED the neck on it. I am used to the thinner (front to back) neck of my Cirrus 5, so it took me a little bit to get used to it, but once I did, I found it very comfortable. And the sound.................WOW.

As to strings, I really don't know. I was told it has the Warwick Black Labels on it now, and I like how they feel and sound, so I will probably stick with them when it comes time to restring it.

I stayed up till about 3 am last night playing it, and started again when I got up this morning. Can't seem to put the dang thing down....................

later
Ryan
 
#73
I will get a pic up in the next day or two. Broke my camera, so I will have to borrow my buddy's.

Yeah, I am gonna order my strings from Musician's Friend. While I like to stay as loyal as I can to my local music store (they treat me REALLY well), I can dang near by two sets from MF for the price of one set from the store.

Now I just wish I would have realized the potential of these basses years ago. Amazing what a difference a decent setup will do for a bass.

later
Ryan
 
#74
Ya about 7 years ago i started slapping and just thought i couldnt do it. So almost stopping slapping forever i got a warwick and traded in my crappy fender i had and relized i was doing it correct all those years just the bass sucked! So now i use my corvette for most of the slapping parts and want to get a dolphin pro 5 string to jam with now!
 
#75
Originally posted by rickreyn
I was reading a 1997 Bass Player 5-string Shootout and noted that of all the quality basses tested, none were Warwicks! I had to ask why? Then I stopped to think. At my local Mars, the Warwicks seem to grow moss on the walls. Why? Another local music store that carried Warwicks had to run a fire sale to ultimately get rid of them. Why? What I have noticed in my limited travels is that when Warwicks are "pushed out the door" after growing moss, they get lapped up. Why? In the CD reviews in Bass Player, rarely are the players' main axes Warwicks. Why?
Click to expand...

Funny you mention this.. i've been reading BP mag for about 2 years now, and the thing that i've always noticed is that the reviews they do are pretty much always high-end basses.. never mid-range ones.. the BP reviewers seem to have a lot of affinity towards certain brands, and have prejudice against other brands.. i think it's the same with the stores.. It's partly patriotism ( you're looking for a nice bass sir ? why not try this USA made fender ?! ) and partly ' following the others '..

humans are pretty much like sheep.. once one jumps over the fence, the others will follow.. if there are 2 stores in town that sell mostly fenders, the others will follow.. that's todays economy.. follow the leaders or perrish in an attempt to be different.

about the players.. in Holland we have this predicate / saying / expression which goes like this : " wat the boer niet kent, dat vreet ie ook niet ".. roughly translated it says " the farmer doesn't eat that which he doesn't know ".. it means a lot of people don't try new things because they're somewhat satisfied with what they currently have.. how can you improve without trying new stuff ? it's impossible..

the other thing i'd like to note.. playing bass is very similar to a marriage..

you meet a bass/girl you like.. you start dating the girl ( or go to the store frequently to try the bass out ) and then you decide to take the plunge.. you marry the girl ( buy the bass )..
once you're married to her ( or bought her ) you really get to know her, and learn about her pro's and con's.. no marriage is perfect.. but after time you get to know her real close, and start to really, really love her.. you get used to her.. you adjust yourself to her wishes and standards.. and after a while it's perfect harmony..

bottom line is : if you take the time to get to know your bass.. you'll like it more and more as time goes by..

that some people say that warwicks lack bottom is just hillarious.. warwicks have the most bassy sound imaginable.. it is true that they're not really strong in the upper mids, but the bottom is superior..

the necks are thick, indeed.. the basses are also rather heavy, indeed.. but this thick, hard and heavy wood does in fact contribute to the typical sound the warwicks have.

personally i really dig the warwick sound.. i've tried pretty much all warwick-models ( gotta love those Huge stores in Germany that are official warwick represents :D ), and the one i liked the most is actually the Streamer LX.. i liked it better than the Streamer Stage I and Stage II.. the neck-thru sounds nice, but the bolt-on neck adds a little more punch to the sound that i really, really like..
I've decided to get an LX-5 in natural-finish in June.
 
#79
This thread has probably been put to bed already but some points

In my experieince it's not the weight but the balance. EG I had a Status headless bass with a carbon fibre neck and bought a Stingray 5. The SR5 gave me a sore shoulder after an hour but I could play the Status all day without problems. When I weighed them the Status was heavier. I got a Comfort Strapp after that. I use a Comfort Strapp on my Thumb BO and it cures neck dive and reduces wear on my shoulder.

RE the stock v pup change thing. I fitted new pups and harness in my bass because I was fed up with MEC reliability. I actually prefer the sound of my bass now. It's still the same but it seems to have been liberated. Please note that the number of MEC failures is relatively small I just got a bad one.
 
#80
Originally posted by AllodoX
That's just the German way..

German Saucages, German beer, German car, German men,, they're all a little thicker and heavier than most other Europeans..

it's just a display of 'the good life' (tm) :D
Click to expand...

Hm, as always those stereotypes are not quite true.
The German bass scene (and the Germans) are way to varied and indiviual for that kind of general assumption.

Warwick is by far the biggest bass maker in Germany, and most other companies have a totally different design and construction philosophy, e.g. Esh or Jens Ritter or Basslab or...

I agree that Warwicks are not for everyone.
Not for me either, except maybe old Dolphins, NT Thumbs or NT Streamers. I think the quality went down when the production numbers went up, but in the late 80s/early 90s they were amazing. They had a growl in their sound that was unique.
 

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