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Not really a NBD - it's complicated

Happy Jack

By Happy Jack,
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Happy Jack Grand Master

Happy Jack

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God, where do I start? How much detail to go into? Is this a review or a graphic novel? Let's keep it as short and simple as possible.

 

One year ago, between Lockdowns, I saw a bass that I really liked - a Grosmann by Cristian Grosu in Romania. Essentially a Jazz shape but hollow-bodied with f-holes, piezo pickups under the saddles (no mag at all), a quirky home-made bridge, and a lovely colour and figure to the body wood. I play a lot of doubling gigs these days, swopping between double bass and a Precision during each set, and I really liked the idea of having a bass guitar which would start by sounding more like a DB and deliver the same sort of signal to my rig.

 

£900 was a bit of a punt on a bass from a manufacturer I'd never heard of, and from Romania of all places, but his website looked convincing and he seemed to have loads of very happy Romanian customers. They're mainly Metal players, but I won't hold that against them -  I blame the parents.

 

So the bass arrived, looking every bit as good as I'd hoped, plugged it in ... nothing, nada, not a sausage, bugger all. I did all the obvious things and got nowhere. I opened up the back plate to find an absolute rat's nest of wiring which I didn't understand and didn't dare touch, so I closed it up again and PM'd Cristian.

 

Please imagine that this paragraph runs to well over a thousand words as Cristian and I bat the problem back and forth. He keeps assuring me that the bass was working fine when he sent it, why would he send me a bass he knew wasn't working etc. and (infuriatingly) keeps asking me if I like the bass! He seems to really struggle with the notion that I would not warm to an instrument that cost me a lot of money and doesn't work.

 

Worse, with all my wiggling and jiggling and fiddling, every now and then I can get the bass to work for about five minutes, and it sounds great!

Edited by Happy Jack
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Happy Jack Grand Master

Happy Jack

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After two weeks of this nonsense I lose all patience, take the bass to my regular guy in Denmark Street (Andy Gibson - he's worked on nearly a hundred basses for me over the years) and tell him, I don't care what you have to do, just get it working.

 

He looks at the bass like he just trod in it and starts pointing out what's wrong with it. The bridge is an utterly dreadful thing, the wrong size, dysfunctional, and fitted at an angle. The knobs aren't fitted properly, the strap buttons are wrong, you name it. In particular, he points out that all the components used to build this bass (apart from the wood) are the cheapest, shoddiest things on the market ... things like the pots and the jack socket are only fit for the bin. On a £900 bass.

 

Then he opens the cavity and starts laughing. He tells me the wiring seems to have been done by a 9-year-old, the GraphTech preamp is a good make and should be fine but there are bits of clipped wire hanging from it. The thing's a mess.

 

Two weeks later Andy calls me. The wiring is way past salvage which makes the preamp unusable. I contact Cristian who immediately sends me a brand new replacement unit. Fair play to him.

 

Andy fits the new unit. While everything is spread out on the bench it all works. He calls me and says, come and see, it's fine. By the time I get there he has re-assembled the bass and ... it doesn't work any more. Cue more wiggling and jiggling and fiddling plus extra head-scratching. I go away.

 

Do please remember that this account is the SHORT version.

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Happy Jack Grand Master

Happy Jack

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Two weeks later Andy calls me again. He's found what the problem is. The rout for the jack socket has been drilled fractionally too small. The wiring was working fine when not in the bass, but as soon he tightened the screws to lock everything in place, one or more components were distorting slightly and causing a short. I tell him to replace everything. Every electronic component, every piece of wiring, take the bloody thing down to bare wood and start over. Andy says, the preamp has blown again. Aaaargh!

 

I buy another GraphTech preamp. We are way past the point where any of this makes any economic sense, I should have sent the bass straight back to Cristian and demanded a refund ... oh heck, whatever.

 

Andy's heart is no longer in this. The Grosmann has been hanging around his workbench like a bad smell for far too long, he wants shot of it and is giving it only the most cursory attention. He fits the new preamp, the bass works intermittently for an hour or so and then it doesn't. Game over.

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gary mac Veteran

gary mac

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3 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

I take the bass away from Andy and call up @gary mac. Foolishly he accepts the commission.

 

Do you feel like taking up the story from here Gary?

.......just when I thought that I could put this behind me and get back to repairing well behaved basses and guitars. 

 

Ok. 

After Jack left it with me, I cleared my bench and set about having a look at the electronics. 

It looked like someone who shouldn't be left alone with tools had been at it. I tried to test it out with a multi meter and make sense of what should have gone where but it soon became obvious that it was too far gone to be able to save.

As Jack mentioned, the bridge was a horrid thing, like something you would find on Fred Flintstone's bass, if he had one. So a more standard Fender style replacement was found and installed in the correct position. 

I then ordered a set of graph tech saddles with the built in pickups, a graph tech preamp and battery box etc. The saddles arrived within a couple of days, the preamp didn't. It was coming from Canada and eventually turned up about twelve weeks later. I set about installing it and although a fiddly job, it went smoothly enough. I restrung the bass, made all the necessary adjustments and plugged it in to my little combo. It sounded lovely, for all of five minutes and then the sound just fizzled out and died.😕

After checking and rechecking all the connections, it still wasn't working. At this point I contacted, via email, Graph Tech's technical department in Canada. A very helpful chap then started offering advice and attempting a diagnosis. This was a painfully slow process, due to the different time zones. We went back and forth over a couple of weeks, until he could not come up with anything else for me to try. At this point he offered to send out a complete replacement FOC. 

The replacement turned up very much more quickly than the previous one and I set about installing it. 

I was almost dreading plugging in, as this bass had now been through four preamps. Anyway, I nervously plugged in a cable, turned up the volume and it worked, just as importantly it stayed working and I was finally able to phone Jack with some good news. 

 

I had spent a ridiculous amount of time on this job and had actually given up on keeping track of the hours spent. I was just happy that Jack would finally have the bass in his possession and be able to play and hear it.

 

I'm now enjoying a very similar experience with the preamp in a Sire bass.....happy days.

 

 

 

 

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shoulderpet Mentor

shoulderpet

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

God, where do I start? How much detail to go into? Is this a review or a graphic novel? Let's keep it as short and simple as possible.

 

One year ago, between Lockdowns, I saw a bass that I really liked - a Grosmann by Cristian Grosu in Romania. Essentially a Jazz shape but hollow-bodied with f-holes, piezo pickups under the saddles (no mag at all), a quirky home-made bridge, and a lovely colour and figure to the body wood. I play a lot of doubling gigs these days, swopping between double bass and a Precision during each set, and I really liked the idea of having a bass guitar which would start by sounding more like a DB and deliver the same sort of signal to my rig.

 

£900 was a bit of a punt on a bass from a manufacturer I'd never heard of, and from Romania of all places, but his website looked convincing and he seemed to have loads of very happy Romanian customers. They're mainly Metal players, but I won't hold that against them -  I blame the parents.

 

So the bass arrived, looking every bit as good as I'd hoped, plugged it in ... nothing, nada, not a sausage, bugger all. I did all the obvious things and got nowhere. I opened up the back plate to find an absolute rat's nest of wiring which I didn't understand and didn't dare touch, so I closed it up again and PM'd Cristian.

 

Please imagine that this paragraph runs to well over a thousand words as Cristian and I bat the problem back and forth. He keeps assuring me that the bass was working fine when he sent it, why would he send me a bass he knew wasn't working etc. and (infuriatingly) keeps asking me if I like the bass! He seems to really struggle with the notion that I would not warm to an instrument that cost me a lot of money and doesn't work.

 

Worse, with all my wiggling and jiggling and fiddling, every now and then I can get the bass to work for about five minutes, and it sounds great!

 

1 hour ago, gary mac said:

.......just when I thought that I could put this behind me and get back to repairing well behaved basses and guitars. 

 

Ok. 

After Jack left it with me, I cleared my bench and set about having a look at the electronics. 

It looked like someone who shouldn't be left alone with tools had been at it. I tried to test it out with a multi meter and make sense of what should have gone where but it soon became obvious that it was too far gone to be able to save.

As Jack mentioned, the bridge was a horrid thing, like something you would find on Fred Flintstone's bass, if he had one. So a more standard Fender style replacement was found and installed in the correct position. 

I then ordered a set of graph tech saddles with the built in pickups, a graph tech preamp and battery box etc. The saddles arrived within a couple of days, the preamp didn't. It was coming from Canada and eventually turned up about twelve weeks later. I set about installing it and although a fiddly job, it went smoothly enough. I restrung the bass, made all the necessary adjustments and plugged it in to my little combo. It sounded lovely, for all of five minutes and then the sound just fizzled out and died.😕

After checking and rechecking all the connections, it still wasn't working. At this point I contacted, via email, Graph Tech's technical department in Canada. A very helpful chap then started offering advice and attempting a diagnosis. This was a painfully slow process, due to the different time zones. We went back and forth over a couple of weeks, until he could not come up with anything else for me to try. At this point he offered to send out a complete replacement FOC. 

The replacement turned up very much more quickly than the previous one and I set about installing it. 

I was almost dreading plugging in, as this bass had now been through four preamps. Anyway, I nervously plugged in a cable, turned up the volume and it worked, just as importantly it stayed working and I was finally able to phone Jack with some good news. 

 

I had spent a ridiculous amount of time on this job and had actually given up on keeping track of the hours spent. I was just happy that Jack would finally have the bass in his possession and be able to play and hear it.

 

I'm now enjoying a very similar experience with the preamp in a Sire bass.....happy days.

 

 

 

 

Wow, I feel bad for the OP,  I have had my own nightmare (but nowhere near this bad) experience with trying to sort some issues with an Artec preamp with a dodgy mid control and mid sweep, the supplier of the preamp blamed it on the tech fitting it, the tech blamed it on the preamp, I forwarded a wiring diagram to the tech and asked him to have another look at it and he got the mid control working but not the mid sweep, in the end I had the bass wired passive because the original preamp sounded bad and the Artec one gave me no end of troubles, I was pis*ed about these issues with fitting a preamp on a sub £300 bass so I can only imagine how frustrating this must have been with the multiple issues that should not have been present on a bass costing nearly a grand.

I would gather testimonials and proof of any costs incurred in fixing the bass and speak to the supplier of the bass about recouping these costs 

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