Well, there has been a lull in activity on this one but a long night unable to sleep and a bit of online shopping and I'm a microstep further along by buying the chrome bits I need. Now, all that's left to procure in terms of parts are the pots and wiring. I will do as much as I can with self assembly, which won't be a lot to be honest: fitting the tuners to the neck, fitting the strap buttons, shielding inside the pickup cavities... That's about it! Because the body has never been used it's not even been drilled out for the bridge so that needs properly measuring, with a original neck that needs some fettling I want to hand this over to a professional. Once it's all pieced together and functional then I'll see how it is, see how I find the pickups and when I'm happy I'll make cardboard templates for the pickguard and send these to gig.ink to get made up.
The interesting part will then be looking back at what I've spent and once again comparing it to what I could have bought from Sire! Easily a V3, but if it gets into brand new V7 money then I'm hoping it's a really unique bass in terms of sound and playability, not just looks and back-story.