Ok... so I did the most foolish thing ever in my 25+ years of playing bass... and it was to my beloved Sadowsky #233. I broke my cardinal rule: When leaving a gig, always put your gear into your vehicle BEFORE you chat with friends, answer your cell phone, or in other ways, get distracted. I failed to do so, and without going into greater detail, I rolled my 2+ ton pickup over my Sadowsky after last night's worship gig at my church. Talk about "that sunken feeling" in my gut. Yikes!! Needless to say, I quickly jumped out of my truck, pulled my bass out of a visibly damaged gig bag, an instantly looked at the neck, fully expecting it to be snapped or crushed. Now here is where the Grace comes in: The neck was untouched. Sighting down the neck, it was clearly over-bowed. I now became distraught that the truss-rod had been damaged, so I quickly adjusted the truss wheel to provide relief to the neck. Happily, the over-bow was replaced with a nearly flat neck profile. It was then that I saw the visible damage.
My Aquilar TLC pedal was in the gig bag gear pocket sitting above the neck/body junction of my bass and it was what thankfully took the brunt of the damage. Unfortunately, the steel wings of the pedal body were pressed down through the gig bag into the lower horn of my bass by the weight of my truck (see pix) and did some real damage to the body. I am hopeful that Roger and his team might be able to repair this, but in all honestly, I was and am ultimately more concerned with the condition and stability of the neck (and any other potential damage that I can't see), especially since the truss-rod had to be put into a significantly different position for a decent relief that it had been before rolling over it.
After assessing the damage in those first few minutes after the mishap, I quickly checked to see if my #233 could tune up (it did) and also checked the intonation - it was almost spot on! Playing felt a bit different than normal (not surprisingly), but I gained more hope that my bass might have been spared.
I let it sit for the night and then spent a good deal of time this morning assessing things. Other than the obvious damage to the lower horn of the body, there were two additional visible cracks on the inside of the upper and lower horns, one on each side of the neck pocket. Hopefully they are only cosmetic. Additionally, the E string was damaged pretty good, so I decided to change all the strings out. Once that was done, re-checked and adjusted the intonation and again looked the neck over very carefully and made sure the relief was set correctly. Thankfully, the truss rod continues to be functioning normally, and in every way I could see, the neck has suffered no visible damage. Playing still felt a bit different than normal, however, and then it dawned on me to check the neck attachment bolts. The front two were nice and tight, but the back two needed a slight re-tightening. Once that was done - BAM - there is my old friend! WOW! I am going to take it to my gig tonight, and am going to keep a very careful eye on how stable the neck remains over the next few weeks, but I believe I was given a serous dose of grace on this one guys!
Roger - you make one seriously tough instrument! Thank you sir!!!! I hope to get my bass back to you for evaluation and any possible and/or needful repairs in the next few weeks.
I will also check my Aguilar pedal this evening. If it still functions, I will be pleasantly surprised well.
Grooves left in the lower horn and pickguard by my TLC pedal being crushed into my Sadowsky by my 4400 lbs truck.
Pots crushed down and inward and lower wings splayed outward by pressure of pickup truck rolling over it!
