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I've just talked to my mate / guitar player / BL, who trades guitars quite a lot. He's close but not quite as generous as you lot - he reckons £1,500 to £1,600, which is pretty much what the guy is looking for! Having a think about it...

I’d agree with vincbt Pete, £1600-£1800 is right in the ballpark

It was actually a shop damaged blue VM P/J which I got for cheap. Plugged the bridge cavity kept the P PU and repainted....Its now a standard VM P bass albeit with a minor alteration. Great neck, under 8IIbs and nicely resonant.

They weren't really brothers so probably not.

OK, had a look at the Darkglass Suite again today and as far as I can see you cannot create patches in there. You can select a patch and interrogate the settings but thats it. On feature which I would find good (like the Headrush I had) is to be able to save a pedals settings to a unique filename that can be loaded into a new patch. I know I can write the pedal settings down and enter them by hand in a new patch but this would be so much simpler and quicker.

It's a good idea but in the last fifteen to twenty years we have been better looked after, with Fender doing a Mexican P bass and Sire doing everything! There have been a few sellers I've noticed that do this kind of thing. There was one on eBay doing nice Fender shaped stuff but they were having around a long time before selling, there's also someone in Japan who bolts together unique basses made from the usable bits of old knackered ones. Thing is it's a gamble buying one of these. So I guess if you're looking for the USP in selling bitsas for me it would be the personal touch in design consultation and instrument handover that would make the sale, rather than seeing a nice picture online. I built a fantastic looking PJ bass bitsa myself with good quality bits but it just didn't ever feel right to me, so you're playing it down by saying it's just screwing some bits together, that all important finishing and set up is the real value!

Get rid of it. Don't let this be about money. Sell it and move on. That's still more than you paid for it all those years ago.

Sorry I may be a bit behind the curve here (I tried to read all the posts above but my other half was insistent on telling me about somebody, whom I have never met, kids latest news, despite the fact I was clearly reading something). I see @Phil Starr stepped in about the Warwick Gnome. I think they are far from transparent in the EQ sense. I have owned the basic 200 watt version and now own the iPro 280 watt. I also have two LFSys Monzas and the first time I tried the iPro through a Monza it sounded horrible to my ears. Fortunately, @Phil Starr clued me in about the Gnome’s baked in EQ profile and I now have the weirdest looking settings, which make it sound good through the Monza. Conversely it sounds OK through my Barefaced Two10S without the tweaking but that is because it is unravelling the Two10S’ default vintage colouring. It is definitely the antidote to vintage; does that make it HiFi? I have never found the jack out on the Gnome a problem and all my cabinets have speakon sockets. Just get a jack to speakon loudspeaker cable, available for very little on fleaBay and the like. If you want an effects loop, pre-post DI out and speakon sockets on a Gnome, you are going to have to go for the iPro 600 watt v2. It is still within your budget but is a bit bigger and heavier than the lower powered versions. It may still fit in a gig bag pocket though and it also benefits from 4 band EQ. I have no idea whether the baked in EQ is different from the original.

Interesting idea! I've built a bits jazz myself, from a rescued eBay AllParts body (a beautiful sunburst some guy had tried to mount everything on 3 times, including the bridge - took some fixing, but it's a gorgeous body) and a Warmoth ebony fretless neck I bought nearly 30 years ago, which had been languishing on a terrible Hohner body for years. Slapped in a pair of Squier jazz pickups I found and it sounds lovely, so I know where you're coming from - I actually repainted the Hohner body when I fitted the neck to it, just rattle can but it was a nice shade of midnight metallic blue. I've read some of the responses here and one of the ones which struck me as a good point was the sheer number of fender type basses out there you can get - and Squiers, too. I wondered if there might be any challenge / fun in finding a "good" chickenbacker from e.g. AliExpress, then upgrading it with better parts (making sure the basses were through necks, or whatever) - using the bass as a starting point. I understand some vendors do sell kits, as well, unpainted. You'd have to sell in places like Fakenbackers on Facebook, and you wouldn't be able to list here, unfortunately (IIRC)... they have other fake basses too though, there could be a USP in taking e.g. fake Dingwalls and making them far better basses. Could be fun finding out how to do things like round out sharp fret ends, improve neck condition, even finishing the kits, I guess. It is fun putting bits together and getting something playable out, no doubt. I'll probably do the same when I retire (when I'm not gigging)!

Don’t you lie to me - Chuck Berry

This is a good point. I honestly think the best solution at the moment would be a long-term swap with someone who wanted to try out a Stingray for a few months and left another bass with me in the meantime. That would be just about perfect.

There was of course that crazy design with flippable frets that went from fretted to fretless at the flick of a switch from Mickey Guitars of Toronto. There was quite a bit of noise about this system in the early naughties.

This has to be the most complete ad for a bassist. All you need to know and with good humour too! If I lived in the home counties I'd be tempted... Enjoy the keys Jack! joe

...that's me out then

Start a band and talk to people about it(people know people and some of those people play music). It's kinda what I did in my early 40's, and on a drunken night out in 2005 I found out that two of my then colleagues were actually very good musicians (and one a talented songwriter). We recruited a drummer and ended up in a band that lasted close to 10-years and which still occasionally gets together to play despite a couple of geographical challenges 👍

... is absolutely not required to replace me as the bass player in long-standing covers band The Junkyard Dogs. Based in Harrow, we've been going a long time (since 2010 in this incarnation) and the line-up has changed occasionally. As part of a serious refresh, I want to move sideways onto keys which of course means bringing in a new bassist. My God-like ability on bass is totally non-existent so any competent player would be perfectly capable of stepping in. We play essentially the hits of 1965-85 so there is no requirement to slap, tap or sweep, and very little call for relentless disco octaves everywhere. Getting all chordal on our asses or playing jazzy bass solos is pretty much contra-indicated. If you can sing then that's a bonus, but not a requirement. If you can play another instrument then that's also a bonus, but not a requirement. We currently play around 20 gigs a year but we're looking to gradually ease back up to our natural home, which is c.30 gigs a year. We go out for £250-£300 a gig, very occasionally £360, so this time next year we won't be millionaires. We try to rehearse every week (usually a Thursday but we can be flexible), not so much because we feel we need to but because we're a friendly bunch who enjoy each other's company. We're all in our 60s but - yet again - that's not a requirement. We have our own excellent rehearsal facility in Sudbury Hill, close to the Piccadilly Line, but for gigging purposes any incoming band member must have their own gear & reliable transport. If you're not up for this yourself but you think you might know someone who'd be a good fit, please feel free to pass on the details. https://www.lemonrock.com/junkyarddogs https://www.facebook.com/junkyarddogslondon https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTdLOzCAQkvIfkFdnhTLP4Q

Nicely put, my problem - and to be honest it was a problem - was that as a kid I had zero money as was largely the case with my family. Even my early 80's Satellite Bass was a stretch for my family, so I 'd look through gear mags and daydream about owning one of two basses, a MM Stingray or a Hagstrom Swede (I SO wanted a Hagstrom Swede....._ ..and that 'life will be better if.....' thing takes hold in the same way as s many other habits of thought or action take hold. And then in my 40's when for the first time in my life my incomings exceeded my outgoings, that thing came back and tugged at my consciousness. Took me close to 15 years to get on top of it. A great if expensive journey, but one from which I'm glad to have got to my destination 👍

My rule about this is that if you just don't care, sell it. If you have even the slightest hesitation, hold on to it until you don't anymore because any money you earn will eventually get spent and then you will have nothing anyway. And once the instrument is gone, it's gone.

You Talk Too Much - Sultans of Ping