I know there are several other older threads regard the Wan, but I wanted to share my recent experience with the Wan Bernadel bass on a fresh thread.
I have been looking for a carved bass in the 4-6k range for the past two years. I already have a nice ca 1900 7/8 Bohemian/Czech flatback that sounds great, but I don't want to take it out on every gig. My goal was to find a good backup/outdoor bass.
I ended up trying several basses in the last two years that were in my budget and even well beyond my budget. Out of those several, a couple of basses stood out to me, but didn't stand out enough to make me actually buy the instrument. So my search continued until two weeks ago when I found a used Wan Bernadel (2006) bass on craigslist. The price was too good to be true so I made the two hour drive and tried it out. After about 30 min of playing I knew I had found the bass for me. This particular bass is really, really nice. The setup work is superb, the sound is big, round, focused, and very even in all registers and across all four strings. To my surprise, I am now having a hard time going back to playing my old 7/8 flatback and I am even considering selling it and using the Wan and my old Engelhardt Swingmaster as a backup.
I know not all basses sound/play the same, so I'm not going to go out there and say all of these will sound/play like mine, but I would HIGHLY recommend at least trying one out. If you can't afford a new one I would consider searching for an older used one like I got. By now, most of these basses are around 10 years old and are starting to open up. I will be doing some YouTube clips with mine soon and will post them to this thread.
Take care and happy hunting.
-T
I have been looking for a carved bass in the 4-6k range for the past two years. I already have a nice ca 1900 7/8 Bohemian/Czech flatback that sounds great, but I don't want to take it out on every gig. My goal was to find a good backup/outdoor bass.
I ended up trying several basses in the last two years that were in my budget and even well beyond my budget. Out of those several, a couple of basses stood out to me, but didn't stand out enough to make me actually buy the instrument. So my search continued until two weeks ago when I found a used Wan Bernadel (2006) bass on craigslist. The price was too good to be true so I made the two hour drive and tried it out. After about 30 min of playing I knew I had found the bass for me. This particular bass is really, really nice. The setup work is superb, the sound is big, round, focused, and very even in all registers and across all four strings. To my surprise, I am now having a hard time going back to playing my old 7/8 flatback and I am even considering selling it and using the Wan and my old Engelhardt Swingmaster as a backup.
I know not all basses sound/play the same, so I'm not going to go out there and say all of these will sound/play like mine, but I would HIGHLY recommend at least trying one out. If you can't afford a new one I would consider searching for an older used one like I got. By now, most of these basses are around 10 years old and are starting to open up. I will be doing some YouTube clips with mine soon and will post them to this thread.
Take care and happy hunting.
-T
