Info on Calvin Baker/Asa White

[Shawn Charniga]

I have much, much better pictures of that bass pre-"restoration." The photos in the eBay ad are deceiving. The seller is not a musician; his late mother bought the bass from her teacher 50+ years ago.

Serious belly sinkage, paper-thin edges on the top plate, ribs spiderwebbed with old cracks, 1/8" back seam separation from drying out in a closet for decades (gotta love air conditioning) and a partridge in a pear tree. Oh, and one of the four machines is not original if you look closely. The best thing I can say about it was that the neck was straight, and the maple was beautiful. If you look closely at the label photo, whoever worked on it didn't bother to replace the center seam cleats when they jammed the back plates together and slapped them onto the ribs. It's barbaric.

I was in the bank lobby ready to do the wire transfer to the owner's account while I was texting with my buddy in Florida, who was going to pick the bass up and hold it for me. I knew it was rough, but when the photos started coming in showing the extent of its' problems, I called the seller to bawl him out.

The seller cracked and admitted that he got a $5k repair estimate several years prior, but kindasorta forgot to mention that to me. He was desperate for cash, because he needed to pay a fine to settle a legal beef and leave the state. I told him to screw, kept my money and ended up with a beautiful Solano. There's more shadiness to the story, but that's the meat of it.