OK, so I already came clean with MEKer through PM that for a short time this year, I was no longer a member of the Washburn Club. At one time I owned three Washburns, and earlier this year I sold my last one- my Force 5 ABT.
About two years ago I sold my Force 4 ABT in favor of the Force 5 because hey, same bass except one extra string! Turns out that extra string did nothing for me. And the string spacing was too close for me anyway. I started to regret my decision to sell the Force 4- in spades.
I started looking online. I figured there MUST be someone out there who wants to get rid of theirs, right? WRONG. Every lead turned into a dead end.
I found a seller in the UK for decent price, but he wasn't willing to ship it in spite of my assurances that I wasn't a scammer. I found one in the Netherlands with the same situation. I even posted an ad in my local Craigslist hoping the fellow who bought mine would see it and sell it back to me. I had almost given up hope that I would find another, and then one day about a month ago while I was thinking about it again, I decided to do a another Google search. I encountered the same tired (and expired) listings that I had always found, until about page three or four of the search I ran across an obscure ad on a website called offerup.com. I'd never heard of offerup.com before, but lo and behold, there she was- a Washburn Force 4 ABT.
So, I contacted the seller, and of course got no immediate response. I figured it was another dead end, but then he replied! He was a fellow in Chicago who needed dough for whatever reason, and the price was sort of OK. After some back and forthing, we agreed on a price, shipping method, and time of transfer. A week later, she finally arrived.
She arrived in a hard side Washburn-branded flight case that looks and feels more like it was designed to survive a bomb blast. And despite the seller's assurances, it was not in as good a shape as he let on. Screws were missing, screws were mismatched, nuts & washers were missing from the pots, the fret board was filthy, the strings were strung wrong, the tuner hardware was lose, and some jack-hole jury rigged the internal wiring so that the pickup selector was wired backward.
The one saving grace was that the neck and body were in great shape. So I sent away for some new hardware, and in the mean time cleaned the fret board, polished the frets, and did all other needed housekeeping until the hardware arrived. When it came, I put it all together then took it in for a setup and had them slap on a set of my favorite strings.
It was like welcoming home an old friend! The strings spacing is wider than I remember for the Force 4, and curiously the neck is thicker than I remember- more like a P bass. But the tone- oh the tone is right there, and it's still so comfortable to play!
IMO the Force 4 ABT is one of the sexiest basses that Washburn ever made, and I'll be damned if I ever sell this one again!
About two years ago I sold my Force 4 ABT in favor of the Force 5 because hey, same bass except one extra string! Turns out that extra string did nothing for me. And the string spacing was too close for me anyway. I started to regret my decision to sell the Force 4- in spades.
I started looking online. I figured there MUST be someone out there who wants to get rid of theirs, right? WRONG. Every lead turned into a dead end.
I found a seller in the UK for decent price, but he wasn't willing to ship it in spite of my assurances that I wasn't a scammer. I found one in the Netherlands with the same situation. I even posted an ad in my local Craigslist hoping the fellow who bought mine would see it and sell it back to me. I had almost given up hope that I would find another, and then one day about a month ago while I was thinking about it again, I decided to do a another Google search. I encountered the same tired (and expired) listings that I had always found, until about page three or four of the search I ran across an obscure ad on a website called offerup.com. I'd never heard of offerup.com before, but lo and behold, there she was- a Washburn Force 4 ABT.
So, I contacted the seller, and of course got no immediate response. I figured it was another dead end, but then he replied! He was a fellow in Chicago who needed dough for whatever reason, and the price was sort of OK. After some back and forthing, we agreed on a price, shipping method, and time of transfer. A week later, she finally arrived.
She arrived in a hard side Washburn-branded flight case that looks and feels more like it was designed to survive a bomb blast. And despite the seller's assurances, it was not in as good a shape as he let on. Screws were missing, screws were mismatched, nuts & washers were missing from the pots, the fret board was filthy, the strings were strung wrong, the tuner hardware was lose, and some jack-hole jury rigged the internal wiring so that the pickup selector was wired backward.
The one saving grace was that the neck and body were in great shape. So I sent away for some new hardware, and in the mean time cleaned the fret board, polished the frets, and did all other needed housekeeping until the hardware arrived. When it came, I put it all together then took it in for a setup and had them slap on a set of my favorite strings.
It was like welcoming home an old friend! The strings spacing is wider than I remember for the Force 4, and curiously the neck is thicker than I remember- more like a P bass. But the tone- oh the tone is right there, and it's still so comfortable to play!
IMO the Force 4 ABT is one of the sexiest basses that Washburn ever made, and I'll be damned if I ever sell this one again!
