Jean-Luc Pickguard

That's looking remarkably clean for its age. What a great find. I hope you paid the old fella the market rate for it.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303895421293?hash=item46c194216d:g:ruwAAOSwRZpgM-VE I'm pretty sure this is the cheapest version of the Squier Starcaster guitar, the affinity with a custom paint job and other tweaks, but am I alone in finding it jarring that all the effort that went into painting the union flag has resulting in it sending a distress signal as it has been painted upside down?

Life was much simpler in the old days

That was my uncle Bob’s favourite saying. Lovely man, terrible anaesthesiologist though.

I thought it was about a lesser bass with a fake 'encore' decal

What sort of stupid band name is 'the lovely eggs' anyway. Did they come up with that over breakfast?

They're probably hurt that when they go off stage no one ever calls for them to come back on so they never get to play their three best songs.

Salad dressing is a great tasting alternative to fingerboard oil

Fender make a fine range of mustang basses at various price points from a squier version up to the JMJ signature roadwork and the american performer.

Definitely an isolated incident. Hipshot make quality stuff & the tuners on my JMJ are perfect

I have an ik multimedia irig keys with mini keys, and its great but I'm not the worlds best keys player so I tend to use the logic remote app on my iPad instead to add some organ, piano or synth to my tracks.

It won't do any harm in the meantime to contact your creditcard company and instigate a chargeback. Tell them the full saga and how ebay/paypal is making you wait for your money to be possibly returned.

Mmmm - it is beginning to sound like giving the seller the benefit of doubt is being overgenerous.

It certainly does smell fishy. If the story is true how would the tealeaf know for certain that the payment has been made? Hypothetically if the seller is pulling a fast one, it could be that the auction ended on a lower price than the seller hoped for, so spinning this yarn is an attempt to get out of selling it at that price and getting ebay's fee waived - which would normally still be charged on a cancelled sale.

I'm sure the seller will have to take the loss, so they must be feeling a right chump for handing it over like that.

The "not sure of history" disclaimer is particularly telling. Definitely fake

The rascal was only available for a short time, so they might not come up secondhand very often. It is the same scale as a mustang so maybe one of the mexican PJ mustangs might be worth a look - either to use as-is or customised with different/extra pickups. Sienna sunburst is the best colour for these & one of the few that comes with a maple fingerboard.

I've recently bought a MojoMojo. I prefer the purple colour scheme of the Paul Gilbert version but as I'm only using the pedal to add some low gain oomph into my VT Bass I don't need it to go up to eleven so I got the standard version. It has replaced the Boss ODB-3 on my pedalboard and I don't miss having a blend knob at all.

Or my favourites "all requests must be written on a twenty pound note" or "we don't do that song, but the next one uses some of the same notes"

<Rolls Eyes>

I miss the days when buskers would play an unamplified acoustic guitar, and if they were singing the volume was dictated by what they could push out of their lungs.

as in "remember that chump that turned up with a butchered vintage Fender he paid over five grand for" I'd imagine its actually worth somewhere in the ballpark of half the asking price if all the hardware is original. Then you'd need to spend several hundred to get a sympathetically reliced body to replace the abomination it currently has. That body could then be given a decent burial and never be mentioned again.

I like the lollipop tuners

Sounds like you're looking for something like the Fender Rascal bass