Buying from ebay

Royale with Cheese

In the process of buying a Warwick bass off ebay. Seller has over 160 transactions and 100% feedback. Bass looks great from the pictures.

One problem though. The serial number shown in the pictures indicates the date of manufacture as June 2001 yet the machine heads all say West Germany on them, when they should say Germany.

I asked the seller about how much of the hardware was original and he said he never noticed the West Germany thing before and as far as he was aware it was all original.

Is this something I should be worried about, if the machine heads are replacements from a pre united Germany model. Actually does anybody know when Warwick stopped putting West Germany on their hardware?

The bass isn't in production anymore and the price is great so I am very tempted.

Did a google image search and nearly all the models I found had Germany written on them, except for one from 1985 which had West Germany so the machine heads are definitely quite old. The model in question didn't go into production until 1994 though so they're definitely not the original machine heads.

Dord

Warwick moved production in 1995 from their factory in Erlangen, western Germany to one in eastern Germany in a place called Markneukirchen.

are you sure you read the sn correctly?

Royale with Cheese

Yeah the last two numbers of the serial number are 01. Regardless this model wasn't in production until after the reunification of Germany.

I'm just hoping the machine heads were just replaced at some stage by ones off an older Warwick bass being used for spare parts. I don't want a bass that has been entirely built out of spare parts, but it really does look great from the pics and the seller definitely seems reputable.

Dord

That's possibly the case, parts changed out for older ones.
have you got a link or a picture of the bass?

Royale with Cheese

Here is the body



And here is the serial number with West Germany on the back of the machine heads

Dord

Nice, I'd hit that!

you could always email Warwick and ask them if you're that worried about it?

Royale with Cheese

Well I need to make a decision quickly so there's probably no point in emailing Warwick.

Currently I'm going to go ahead and buy it, unless anybody on here would suggest any reasons why I shouldn't.

Beecher

I'd def hit that, been playing a Corvette 6 all day today and man I forgot how nice Warwicks are. And just to clear your mind the machine heads of my bro's corvette say West Germany and it was bought new in 2002.

Royale with Cheese

Cheers Beecher. Gonna go ahead and buy this then. Been playing a Warwick Rockbass for the past 3-4 years, time to step up to something better.

Royale with Cheese

Woooooooooooo. Just after winning this auction.

There were no bids at all until yesterday. Starting price was $599, no reserve. I was mailing the seller and he'd pretty much agreed to stop the auction and sell to me for $750 after shipping. However he wasn't very easy to reach. I sent him a confirmation message on this deal... but didn't hear anything back from him so I decided to put a bid in before somebody else did.

So I bid $599 yesterday, finally get a message from the seller saying 'oh with this bid you could get it cheaper than $750, do you still want me to stop the auction'. Of course I said yeah but never heard anything from back from him. He never mailed me back before 2am before (which is when the auction was ending) so I didn't expect the auction to be cancelled.

So my bid was the only one til 2 minutes before the end when somebody came along and started upping the bid. I had my max set to $750 and he was getting dangerously close to that so I went to up that to $800... and my fúcking internet connection went down with 44 seconds left!

Reset the router expecting to lose... but the other bidder exactly matched my $750 meaning as the original bidder to bid that much I was the winner. Very relieved. I was about to smash my laptop/router/head against the wall.

So originally the seller said shipping would be about $100. Since we agreed on $750 to stop the auction, which he never did... I'm going to see if he'll give me cheap shipping. I doubt it but it's worth a try. The dollar is worth nothing at the minute so this is a great deal, pending the bass is actually decent.

These things sell for €1450 brand new from Germany, god knows how much in Ireland. So what's the deal with import duty. How much will I be paying? Is it best to ask the seller to mark the value down, or will that affect the postal insurance?

Beecher

Good to hear you got it man, it looks spectacular. Import duty with be 21% + 3.5% if I remember correctly and this is included on the shipping charges too. Just to warn you if you get the shipper to alter the package details to get around or lower the import duty charge and the bass gets damaged you wont have a leg to stand on.

Voodu Child

Open talk of ways to get around import charges is banned on the forum anyhows. If you got it for a great deal, and you're happy, just play it on the up-and-up and let Mr. Taxman have his money.

Royale with Cheese

The seller's agreed to give me free shipping because of our earlier agreement which is really cool. Just have to wait for the money I transferred to my credit card to go through and I can pay.

Suppose I'll have to give the taxman his cut.

NIBBS

it looks fantastic man......congrats.......time I moved up and started playing more......