Cameron,
I've never had an issue with my Kinal truss rods on either of the two that I've had so far. Just because you had an isolated bad experience doesn't give you the right to slam a decent luthier's work, who by the way is a friend and colleague of Mike Tobias. You should do a Google search on Kinal basses, and tell me if all the reviews on Harmony Central are wrong.
I wasn't slamming Kinal, just making a comment on the problem one of mine had.
That being said, you might look up all the other people on here who have experiences with Kinal basses. Cameron seems to be the only one who has had these major issues. Lokire, myself, and many others love their Kinal basses, and Harmony Central has nothing but positive reviews. Chris Tarry also likes Kinal basses. Anything handmade can have minor problems, like Mike Tobias said, there's always changes and variables for each order.
How does slamming decent luthiers on TB benefit anyone in the bass community? It's kind of like the time I was at a church and the pastor started talking dirt on another church that I had also been to before. Not only did it do absolutely nothing positive for their congregation, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth and wound up going back to the old church and ignoring all the negativity that I personally knew was untrue anyway.
When you hear all this negative talk, don't buy it, play a Kinal bass and make your own decision. You can thank me later.
Didn't mean to sabotage the MTD thread, I love MTDs. I just can't wait 2 years and pay $5000, or wait to find a used 34" scale MTD.
Just for the record, Chris Tarry doesn't and hasn't played his Kinal for years - he plays a 5 string Fodera. And my negative talk was a direct result of this luthier screaming at me and my student, denying ANYTHING was wrong with the bass, and we finally had to get Mike Lull to do a repair job on it that was over $500.00. And my students and I had bought over 10 basses off the guy, you'd think he'd back up his stuff. I personally had spent about $10,000.00 with him.
:scowl:
Bad customer service second only to the Eden corporation.
Actually, I find this sort of feedback very useful. I WANT to know if people have had problems with a particular luthier's work. It's not simply a matter of negativity if the facts are legitimate.
By the way, the current wait period for a 535 is 8 to 10 months, and if you don't go with a fancy top...
Thank you vey much.
Lovely. I've got TWO pictures of me with Mr. Tobias from the NAMM shows - does that mean I'm a colleague? And I just noticed a little 'for sale' sign at the bottom of your posts:
Kinal MK5-B for sale
and you're calling ME biased? I'm just trying to inform people about my experiences with Kinal basses. And I didn't start a bashing thread; I was mentioning how easy my MTD's were to adjust compared to the Pedulla and Kinals I had owned. Then you showed up.
And BTW, my first Kinal, a headless (it WAS the 80's) had a truss rod that stopped about 4" from the end of the neck, so it gradually turned into a nice grass hockey stick, unable to be adjusted; my second, a 5 string fretless 1995, a 7 ply neck through, had one truss rod surrounded by two graphite strips - the truss rod did NOTHING, but fortunately it was an unlined fretless, so you could plane the fingerboard to get the relief you needed; and my third and LAST one, a six string fretted from 1996, I asked him for TWO truss rods in the fingerboard - I assumed he would put one on each side of the very wide neck (19mm spacing), so you could adjust the C string side and the B string side somewhat independently, so what did he do? He ran BOTH truss rods RIGHT UP THE MIDDLE OF THE FINGERBOARD, side by side, within 1/2" of each other, with a graphite strip on each side AND one sandwiched between the truss rods. Stable - you bet - 9 ply bubinga and wenge neck, Pau Ferro fingerboard, so solid you could probably jack your car up with it. Unfortunately, the fret job was awful, and you couldn't adjust the neck at ALL, not .00000001", in any direction. You were stuck with the stock settings, period, which were sort of medium high heavy action, not at all what I wanted. Talk about useless.
Don't even TALK to me about wiring issues....
My last words on Kinal basses. My blood pressure goes through the roof at the mere mention of them...
Good luck with your sale. How's the truss rod working for you? Electronics?
Cheers,
Cameron
:scowl: 
