I just recently saw something online about this, so went into a shallow google dive for more info. I wasn’t aware of the pretty contentious history between these two companies. I’m also not sure how much it bothers me/I care, but maybe a little? I guess it’s pretty small potatoes when you consider 90% of all basses are blatant pbass rip offs.
Hats off to both sides, I say. To Warwick for admitting the were in the wrong and to Spector for not going to war over it. The bass world is probably better off for it too.
Interesting. I was totally into the contemporary designs back in the late 80s. The first Warwick that caught my eyes was the Thumb bass, it was the Arsenio Hall house band bassist. I went the other route Tobias and Ken Smith. Germany seems too far away, ![]()
I can’t really comment about the Warwick as I’ve never played one, but the thing I like about Spector is the Ned Steinberger link. He was a furniture designer who worked with Spector to design the original bass (basically, the one Warwick ripped off). So the Spectors are actually an ND design, as are, of courses, the Steinberger basses that were branded Steinberger. Actually, Spector turned down the headless / bodiless design…!
Here are mine. The Spector is an NS2000/4, manufactured sometime between 1999 and 2003. This thing ROCKS! The Steinberger is a contemporary iteration of the classic 80s model. It’s also great to play!
I have/ had the Spector Euro 4 and performer and now I have a few Warwicks Corvette 4 and 5 string SS, to me Spector is in the same camp as Ibanez when it comes to tone, Nasally/ mid that cuts through the mix well. Warwick tends to tune theirs toward conventional a la Fender/ music man crisps tone at idle.
Yeah. I mean you can tell just by looking at them that one copied the other, but the history is super interesting.
In the end, both are awesome. It doesn’t bother me; look at it this way, in the end the industry got much healthier after the lawsuit era when all the Japanese companies came in and ate Fender and Gibson’s lunch too - there’s a lot to be said for high quality competition if things are getting stale.
