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Does anyone know why Sweetwater does not stock Warwick Basses?

I'm trying to figure out the name on the headstock, but no luck finding a website. Do you have a link?

The guy’s name is Christof Kost. Located in Aachen, Germany. Here’s the website: Link Removed
He seems to put significantly more effort into his instruments that into his website, to put it mildly. Plus it’s only in German...
 
High amount of returns and poor sales. A lot of Warwicks suffer from heavy weight and neck dive so they were getting too many returns. Thats at least the case years ago with GuitarCenter who use to carry in house versions of Warwicks (made for GC). Those basses just sat there forever. I know the red Corvette they did was a nice looking and sounding bass but the body was slightly chambered lowering the weight even more which did not sit well with that heavy neck. People would come in and sit down and play it and it would just fall headstock first into the floor. Shame since Warwicks sound so good.

I've owned a Corvette, Streamer Pro M, Streamer Jazzman, Fortress Flashback, and a Fortress One.

None of them had any neck dive.

That being said, I picked up the Streamer Pro M for $499 brand new in a Guitar Center because it was on the wall for a while and nobody was buying it. It needed at battery and the screws on the knobs needed to be tightened. I sold it a week later for $1000. The bass went for around $1400 at the time. That's one of the few basses I've sold that I miss.
 
I think the issue with why Sweet Water does not carry Warwick has to do with Warwick's distribution agreement. I wonder if there are some archane rules because it is a foreign company. Like why you can't buy directly from Warwick as a US citizen buying a custom instrument. You go through a US based store who in turn goes through a distributor.

Regarding the neck dive, I was unaware of this until I was told I had it. Now I feel like I need to go look every time this comes up in a thread. Since basically every Warwick Masterbuilt instrument is a custom instrument, you can swap out the Wenge or Ovangkol neck for a Maple neck.

I have not noted neck dive on any thumb, Corvette, or streamer I have played. I have also played a Corvette neck through $$ made of ash and maple. That has got to be one of the lightest solid body 34" scale basses you can play.
 
^ Title.

I guess it's do to licensing or marketing reasons, but I really don't fully understand the exact reason why.
I trust Sweetwater about 15x more than Musicians Friend. Not to mention you can pick the exact model and know the weight of the instrument before you buy it .....

Overall, SW is a more "upper-end" retailer than MF, so it would make more sense to me that SW carry high-end (IMHO) basses like Warwick.

Where I live geographically it is very very difficult for me to try out basses before buying them. In fact, I have only ever held ONE of my basses before buying it. The other 8 I bought based off pictures and reviews.

So maybe it's a blessing they don't sell them, because I would have already ordered two ....
A few years back I had a crazy case of GAS for a Warwick. The problem was that really no one carries them. They had a show room in NYC that moved to Nashville so it is basically useless.
Sam Ash carries a handful of lower models in their stores, but not the German basses. The answer is cost. A store doesn't want one bass taking up $2knto $5k of inventory dollars, and Warwick doesn't seem to want to work something out with the stores.
However, that isn't just them. You won't see a lot of the very expensive basses in stores for that reason. They are a massive loss prevention risk, they depreciate as people play them, and their price tag limits their potential buyers.
Personally, I think a traveling road show for brands or more NAMM like shows would be a good idea.
 
I've played a 2010 Warwick Corvette $$ for over three years now and never had an issue with neck dive and it's not heavy. Worst bass I had for neck dive was a Gretch electromatic and sold it pretty quickly, it looked great but didn't sound good
 
I agree. It seems like he’s been building for many years. I was really surprised to see this bass in GC and am glad I found it.
I would buy another bass from his shop.
He has indeed been around for a long time.
In terms of built quality , I have not seen anyone at all that would have topped Christof's basses and very few are made as well - his attention to detail is just amazing.
So, as far as I am concerned taste is going to be the deciding factor here. :)
 
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I've played a 2010 Warwick Corvette $$ for over three years now and never had an issue with neck dive and it's not heavy. Worst bass I had for neck dive was a Gretch electromatic and sold it pretty quickly, it looked great but didn't sound good
I had a German 2008 5 string $$ Corvette for about a year. Someone told me a lot of the German basses sent to the US in the late 2000s were broad neck, whether you wanted it or not. I don't know how true that is\was, but there was a slight bit of neck dive on mine. The center of gravity was weird and even though I loved the feel of neck's wood, I had a lot of problems with its size.
 
Do you trust car dealers? Sweetwater’s 55 point inspection sounds like it operates like a car dealer.
The thing about car dealers is it's way easier for them to artifically inflate the price because they're the only game in town. SW competes with MF/GC and local shops and beats them, at least in the customer service department, while still providing the same prices.

I'd say CME is my favorite "big" shop, followed by Sweetwater.
 
^ Title.

I guess it's do to licensing or marketing reasons, but I really don't fully understand the exact reason why.
I trust Sweetwater about 15x more than Musicians Friend. Not to mention you can pick the exact model and know the weight of the instrument before you buy it .....

Overall, SW is a more "upper-end" retailer than MF, so it would make more sense to me that SW carry high-end (IMHO) basses like Warwick.

Where I live geographically it is very very difficult for me to try out basses before buying them. In fact, I have only ever held ONE of my basses before buying it. The other 8 I bought based off pictures and reviews.

So maybe it's a blessing they don't sell them, because I would have already ordered two ....
im not sure why they don't sell them but I do have a ashdown 410 combo amp for sale.. hit me up
 
Well you can't expect them to be clued up on uber high end German basses,it's not like they're in the guitar selling business :roflmao:

With all due respect..After speaking with the manager and a few clerks.. they didn’t have a clue about this bass. I really tried to get some information from them. I went with my gut on this... great purchase.
 
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