corvette vs chaos

Ok iv narrowed down my hunt for a 5 string to 2 models:

the warwick basic corvette 5 string $539
and
the traben chaos 5 string $489

the traben looks nicer and is what i originally had my heart set on buying... but i think the warwick might be slightly better quality.

Any advice?

and i promise ill stop bugging ye after this! :P

[Left Shoe]

trabien are relatively knew on the market not too many people here are going to have info for you at this point , but having the corvette myself you will not be disappointed, make sure you try both out before you decide though

[Anorak]

is that the real warwick or a rockbass

[neatobassman]

have you played them both?

its a rockbass (whats the differance anyway)

thats the thing... id love to try them out but im ordering off the internet.. thats why im asking ye

[Left Shoe]

with anoraks comment... im thinking that is the rock bass and in that case im not sure which id choose

ugh.... ill probably just go with the traben then... its cheaper and looks nicer..

[Left Shoe]

yeah dont go rockbass unless you have not many other choices

thanks


the hell is wrong with rockbass anyway?

[Left Shoe]

they are the german squire in a sense. regular warwick = secks , rock bass = sloppy 4ths

[edgebass5]

Okay, here's my standard rant with Rockbass:
Rockbasses are poorly made Warwick knock-offs. They are made in Indonesia, or Korea, etc. on an assembly line as opposed to real Warwicks, which are hand-built in germany by outstanding craftsmen. Rockbasses have reasonably standard woods and sub-par hardware, as opposed to real Warwicks which have high-grade exotic woods and outstanding hardware. The only thing a Rockbass gives you that a Warwick offers is MEC electronics and pickups which are the worst part of Warwicks to begin with!

[NavyBass]

Originally Posted by Left Shoe

they are the german squire in a sense. regular warwick = secks , rock bass = sloppy 4ths

I don't know about that. They're not bad at all. Yes I've played them, and My firend at the local music store has sold quite a few of them, and not one of them has come back to be repaired or because of workmanship issues. He has even sold them to people with "better" basses and had a few of them come back to tell him that they use it as a gigging bass. I was there twice when that happened.

Look at what you get with them;
Alder body (instead of tone sucking basswood)
Active pickups
Active EQ
Nice massive bridge

Alot of people put down MEC pickups for no reason at all. My Warwick has MEC pickups and I don't plan on changing them ever. The pickups sound great. They sound better than alot of aftermarket pickups out there.

[NavyBass]

Originally Posted by edgebass5

Okay, here's my standard rant with Rockbass:
Rockbasses are poorly made Warwick knock-offs. They are made in Indonesia, or Korea, etc. on an assembly line as opposed to real Warwicks, which are hand-built in germany by outstanding craftsmen. Rockbasses have reasonably standard woods and sub-par hardware, as opposed to real Warwicks which have high-grade exotic woods and outstanding hardware. The only thing a Rockbass gives you that a Warwick offers is MEC electronics and pickups which are the worst part of Warwicks to begin with!

That being said, 90% of Ibanez is made in Korea.

Also, MEC pickups are not as bad as you make them out to be. You say they are bad, ok, what's bad about them. Be specific, don't just say tone or volume.

[edgebass5]

^^^That being said, I don't really care for Ibanez either. Not saying that basses made in Korea are bad, but a better analogy would have been, assembly line versus hand-built.

My disdain of MEC pickups is that they simply sound dead/lifeless to me. The bottom end was marginal, the top end was a bit lacking in that they didn't have the "bite" that I like to come from treble frequencies and the mids were a bit over pronounced (likely to make up for the lack of a strong bottom and top). This has been present on their J style pups and their MM style pups (I haven't tried the soapbar variety yet, but think I would find similar results). When I switched out the MEC's with DiMarzio's in my Corvette I was blown away, it was like night and day. The output was quite a bit lower than the DiMarzio's as well.... All things aside I suppose I should include "IMO" at the end of my appraisal of MEC....

A bit off topic, your website is coming along, I haven't had much of a chance to work on it with the holidays and all, but I'll hopefully have a first draft for you by the end of the week!

[NavyBass]

Originally Posted by edgebass5

^^^That being said, I don't really care for Ibanez either. Not saying that basses made in Korea are bad, but a better analogy would have been, assembly line versus hand-built.

My disdain of MEC pickups is that they simply sound dead/lifeless to me. The bottom end was marginal, the top end was a bit lacking in that they didn't have the "bite" that I like to come from treble frequencies and the mids were a bit over pronounced (likely to make up for the lack of a strong bottom and top). This has been present on their J style pups and their MM style pups (I haven't tried the soapbar variety yet, but think I would find similar results). When I switched out the MEC's with DiMarzio's in my Corvette I was blown away, it was like night and day. The output was quite a bit lower than the DiMarzio's as well.... All things aside I suppose I should include "IMO" at the end of my appraisal of MEC....

A bit off topic, your website is coming along, I haven't had much of a chance to work on it with the holidays and all, but I'll hopefully have a first draft for you by the end of the week!

I understand about the web site.

Finally, another one here that's not an Ibanez lover.

Maybe MEC changed a bit. My FNA was made in 2004, and I actually found the pickups to be very well ballanced and quite loud. I know they used to get a lot of bad reps, but maybe they took that to heart and changed.

[Guinpen]

Most of what I hear is putting down Rockbass in comparison to Warwick, but, compared to other basses in the $500-600 price range, how do they compare?

I played the same 5 the other day and the pickups sounded quite nice, they have a fairly large bottom end and it sounded great with slap. Not too middy-trebly like a lot of basses tend to be with it. I also like the light body, even though I tend to prefer heavy bodies because they feel more solid. The blue stain is ****ing insanely nice looking too.

right now i'm deciding between getting the blue stain corvette 5 and an ibanez sr506, which do you think is of higher quality? they're both in the same price range

it's odd considering a month ago i was completely "**** 5 strings, 4 or 6!" and "i can't stand ibanez" and now i'm like "should i get the 5 string or the ibanez "

[edgebass5]

^^^Could be, I know a lot of pickup manufacturer's change their methods/practices over the years. As far as I know, Warwick is the only company that uses MEC pickups/electronics, so maybe they got enough un-friendly words about them and pressured MEC to pick up their pickups (that was cheesey but I couldn't resist).

EDIT: To the local luthier... I mean Mr. Winters.... ugh... I mean JPBass

[NavyBass]

[quote=edgebass5]pick up their pickupsQUOTE]

Not bad, not bad at all.

[faelun]

I<3 Ibanez

[Manticore Guy]

The need for a random bump?