Warwick Fortress One Active

This 4-string bass was made in Germany (it says "West German") in 1993. It sports a 2-octave, quite thin bolt-on neck made of three pieces of wenge. The fretboard is made of wenge, too. The body is made of three bieces of maple with natural finish, which looks very cool. The pickups are active EMGs (P/J configuration) and the active electronics are made by Basslines. The controls are as follows: one volume, one pickup balance pot, stacked bass/treble and one midrange pot. The volume pot may be pushed for the "slap" sound. You can adjust the bass and treble of the slap sound by tweaking trim pots on the electronics. The bridge is made of two pieces and it is specially designed by Warwick. You can also adjust the height of the zero-fret for the individual strings. The bass does not have a separate battery compartment. All hardware is made by Warwick. The body is heavily contoured, kind of Spector-like. The entire bass is quite light and the body is not one of the biggest.

I have bee nplaying this bass for three years in a funk band and a rock band. I am using a Nemesis 4x10 combo. The bass seems to sound better with the funk band rather than with the rock band. It has a brighter sound, with goods strings you get a very good articulation. However, it has some problems pushing through heavy guitars - you have to tweak the controls for some time before you find a "heavy" tone. It is rather agressive, has a lot of punch, but kind of lacks the fundamentals (probably due to a small and light body. The electronics are great, though. By changing the pickups and setting the EQ you can get a variety of tones. The sound is sort of hi-fi but also "thin".

Probably no comments here - the bass is very easy to set up, you can adjust the truss rod in minutes and the two-piece bridge is adjustable just in any direction imaginable. I had to adjust the pickup height but I don't consider this a great deal of trouble.

I play live almost every week and I never had problems with the Warwick. The hardware is great, although I had problems with the A tuner - while all the strings were in tune for weeks, the A had to be tuned every time - but during the gig it stayed in tune. The neck is waxed and very comfy - I never had to take some special care of it. I have adjusted the truss rod once or twice, which is regular, I guess. However, I had some minor problems with the electronics: the bass is very sensitive to batteries - it seems to play great with new ones but less great with older ones. But still I used it for live playing without a backup.

I live in the Czech Republic and we are a small market, so the ustomer support is not so great here, if any. But elsewhere it may be different. But on the other hand, I never needed any.

The Warwick is a comfy bass. It has a thinner string spacing which was great for me but does not have to be for everybody. The features are great, however, I am selling it right now because of the thin sound I was referring to earlier. It sound great for slapping when you dial appropriate EQ. But still I would wish a more "full" sound.