Warwick Review: Corvette 4 Fretted & FL

History: Mostly play in a duo sometimes trio usually without traps, Ms Diva out front singing songs that are abut 50 yrs old, or older.

Purchase: I bought them as clearance items from the local GC. I had a hotrodded Vett std and these were much lighter and offered more versatile control.

What I Like About This Warwick Corvette 4 Fretted & FL: Very versatile and much lighter than the older bubinga bodied models. These are swamp ash. Controls are very complete. Great tone is avaialble at nearly every imaginable setting, so you don't hafta waste all the EQ range just getting to one good tone. Passive mode availabe by push-pull volume pot. Has PU balancer instead of seperate twin volume knobs. Has conveneient adjustments for set up. The nuts are adjustable and the bridge can be raised or lowered all-of-a-piece. There is adjustment for neck radius and string spacing which is not disturbed by altering the height or tilt of the bridge. There is a seperated stoptail and the distance from the nut to the nearest peg is about 2.5", so strings feel very elastic. It's very well balanced on the strap and plays well sitting down, as well.

What I Do NOT Like About The Warwick Corvette 4 Fretted & FL: The neck is kinda fat. After a long weekend with it, my left hand tells me about it. It should have a seperate battery box. Has no midrange EQ control, and the PU's could have been further apart for more tonal variety [they are extremely close together]. No dummie coils for single coil mode [altho the SC hiss is rather slight].

Warwick Corvette 4 Fretted & FL Quality Rating: Swamp ash body, 3-piece bolt-on neck. Ebony FL and wenge fretted FB's. 2+2 Gotoh-type tuners, tilt-back headstock. Seperate bridge and stoptail. Very adjustable bridge. Dual large-pole humbuckers [MM-type] with ser/par/SC switch for each PU. 2-band active EQ with passive bypass mode. Construction quality seems solid and accurate. It's a no-frills ax cosmetically.

Review Summary: This a very do-it-all 'Swiss Army Knife' kinda bass. Great tone and voice in the all-flat and neutral setting with more equally great options everywhere the controls will take you. Any complaints I have are just personal preferences, not actually flaws. Except maybe for the fat neck. Other makers can deliver a stable neck of more 'normal' dimensions. OTOH, the fat neck may be essential to all the great tone. There's nothing much I would change if I were to order a custom-built bass.

Rating of this Warwick product: 4

This Warwick Corvette 4 Fretted & FL Bass Guitars Review Submitted By: golem

Review Date: 2007-11-28