What? You can't cover scratches? Now I suppose you're going to tell me you don't cover wrong notes either. ;-)

In my case the dealer is in Bethesda, MD. and I live in the SF Bay Area. The bass was a special order and drop shipped directly from the distributor in Boston once it arrived from Germany (Keilwerth). The distributor claimed their tech went over it, but there was no sign the original shipping container had ever been opened. When I unpacked it and tried to play it, I couldn't get it to play even a high Eb because the neck was so loose in the socket it would spin freely even when the receiver screw was tightened all the way down. It was obvious they never looked at it. The horn was supposed to be 100% hand made. I guess it was too much to expect some attention to detail especially when I could have bought a new car with the money I paid for that horn.

I took it to my repair tech to set it up. I was shocked to hear everything that was wrong with the horn and how much work it was going to take to make it playable. I called the dealer who sold me the horn and they were shocked too. They contacted the distributor who refused to cover the repairs even though they were clearly manufacturing defects because I didn't follow their un-communicated warranty procedure, which was ship the horn back to them at my own expense (it would have cost even more the the very hefty repair bill to ship it). The dealer finally convinced the distributor they needed to cover the repairs for at least the most obvious defects and they ended up sending me a check for most of the bill. My repair guy was amazed they sent that check. He said that was the first time in his long career he's ever seen a manufacturer actually pay to have a warranty repair done. Most of the time the dealers either send them back, which is difficult to do with a special order bass that takes six months from order to delivery, or they eat the repairs themselves, which is what the music stores where I used to work as a repair tech did. When I was in the USMC I'd just fix them and move on. We didn't have time to deal with warranty repairs.

Anyway enough of my story of woe. Things are good now even though I'll never buy another new Keilwerth again. I've communicated privately with Steve who assures me he'd never ever let a horn go out in that bad of shape and that he'll be reasonable if the rare problem happens. That's good enough for me and I'm looking forward to paying him a visit later this summer to try out one of his baris while I'm visiting New Orleans because one can never have too many baris.

Blair Barrett

P.S. I used to be in the biz a long time ago, but I found repairing computers earned a better living than repairing horns. I still dabble in repairing, mostly diagnosing problems for friends and doing the occasional emergency field repair. I take my personal horns to someone who has a bench, better equipment, as well as more experience and knowledge than I.