Hey guys, please add me to the club with my two BN5! There are two stories related to these basses - a not so great and a great story.
First I bought a used BN5 from a talkbass user Greg_S from US. He was an absolutely great guy to deal with. He really tried to find the best options for the shipping and found a way to send the bass in two parcels (the neck and the body separately). He even managed to pack the gig bag to the cardboard. The shipping company he used for the shipping was USPS. When I finally got the bass I discovered that the neck was broken into pieces. It was in fact in really bad shape. I was shocked as it is not so easy to find any FBasses in this part of the world. I informed the seller and he offered all money back. That didn't feel like a fair solution for me. We agreed that I shall make a research of the possible solutions and then decide which way to go. I wrote to George about the new neck but the price together with the shipping was even more than what I paid for the whole bass. So I started to find somebody who could repair the neck locally.
I took the broken neck to the local luthier Mr Kalle Tombak (
Tombak Guitars) who is a bass bass player himself but who mostly builds and repairs pianos. He was first a bit sceptical but then took a job. He said it would have been even cheaper to order a completely new neck from him.
I inform the seller about the cost of the repair and ask him if he could pay half of it. He agreed and I let the luthier do his job. Meanwhile I discovered that Greg had wired me the whole amount of the repairing cost. What an amazing guy and a gentleman he is! So I put my part of the repairing cost extra and asked the luthier to refinish the bass (it was already refinished before I got it). Kalle Tombak made amazing work with the bass. The damage the bass had got is hardly seen now. It takes some serious investigation to discover any crack. The neck is rock solid and plays flawlessly. And so I got this wonderful sea-through-blue BN5 with the unusual natural neck heel (love that!). It plays and especially records extremely well. Sounds really amazing through my Glockenklang rig.
PS! I will continue with my another FBass story in my next post.