NBD: Grote club bass

[PennyroyalWe]

My Grote club bass copy finally came today. Super light hollow body, and the red looks fantastic. Only defects I’ve found are a few blemishes near the controls, but for $200 off of Amazon I wasn’t expecting perfection. Other things of note, the bridge is oddly shaped with slanted angles rather than being radiused, resulting in all the strings being the same height, and the neck pickup isn’t as loud as the bridge pickup even after adjusting the height to be even. Eventually I’ll put labellas on it. Can’t wait to take it to band practice to really see how it does.

 

[PennyroyalWe]

So after playing it and checking it out all day yesterday, a few things I noticed. 1) the neck pickup isn’t quieter, the whole thing is wired backwards! The neck pickup is activated/adjusted by the “treble” controls, and vice versa. The bridge pickup was quieter because I had it so far from the strings to level out what I thought was a quiet neck PU. Thank goodness for tapping them with a screwdriver lol. Now, the real thing I take issue with, is there’s a spot under the third feet that looks like it got one pass too many with the rasp at the factory. There’s a dent/low spot on the neck. Honestly, playing it you can’t feel it...but I know it’s there and it bugs me. I’ve contacted the seller to discuss some level of refund. I’d rather not take the chances on an exchange when all in all this is quite the fun playable bass, and who knows if the one I get in exchange would actually be any better. Considering that people have had instruments costing 4x as much that have had craftsmanship issues like this, I think I’d be happy with just getting some money back.