[Johannes Felscher]

Dear Ken,

first of all: thanks a lot for your quick and profound reply, I really appreciate it! Being in NY without a car, stopping by yours or Arnold's shop isn't that easy after all, but that's something on my list for the near future.

Anyway, funny coincidence that you happen to have the (very) same bass, but you may rest assured, I didn't secretly take yours. :-)

The bass seems to be healthy as far as I could tell at the first glance, but as you would probably guess I didn't have a strobe light and / or any other equipment handy, so I couldn't judge what the bass bar looked like. Speaking of a sinking top: it looked fine, but there is a minor oddity, not sure if that qualifies as what you mentioned (didn't attach the pictures on with my first posting, there were two too many)...it's more visible on one of the pictures, I guess you'll get the idea though (it's the instrument on the left on both pics).

And btw., I agree that a first hand luthier's inspection shouldn't be substituted by a quick "online-inspection" in general, this was the best that I could do at this point, might be able to take the bass home once more for a few more days...