lowquality.net

Yep. It’s time. It still seems like yes­ter­day when my Sad­owsky 5-String came in the mail ten years ago. Actu­ally, it has got to be exactly ten years since I received it, as it was the sum­mer of 1997. This bass sur­vived my tenure at Berklee Col­lege of Music, nearly all of the gigs with the JJ Sadler Blues Band, and every gig I played with Jay Rakes. Some peo­ple have a hun­dred instru­ments, and some con­tin­u­ously buy and resell basses, look­ing for “that per­fect one.” I tend to find some­thing thats fairly “me” to begin with and then work with it until I can reach a com­pro­mise between the nat­ural sound of the instru­ment and my own sound. This is why I like Fend­ers and Fender-styled instru­ments. They all have their own indi­vid­ual sounds, but they are also consistent.

Despite its age I haven’t had it in the shop much out­side of the occa­sional setup or noisy poten­tiome­ter. It is cov­ered with scratches and dings and the fin­ish on the neck is prac­ti­cally worn through. It is my bass. All of these marks were caused by me.

Well it’s about time for me to send this bass out for a refret. Cos­metic wear and tear is one thing, but I Have worn some of the frets down to the point that they are buzzing like crazy and I can’t seem to get them to stop. As much as I hate the idea of ship­ping it, I think it is quite nec­es­sary that I send it back to the Sad­owsky shop to have this work done. There are some good luthiers in the area, but it just makes sense to me to send this up to Brook­lyn. I just emailed Roger Sad­owsky for some input on the price and turn­around time. I sus­pect that it will need to have some fret­board work done on it too, in which case (since the board is maple) it will have to be refin­ished. My sus­pi­cion could be wrong though.We’ll see what the guru says.