Maude

I picked up an old Encore P in a charity shop last year. Gave it a good clean and polish, did a fair bit of fret work (levelled, reshaped, polished) and rounded over the fretboard edges, put a Tonestyler pickup in and it is honestly one of my favourite playing basses, it just feels so nice to play and sounds great. £50 for the bass and £25 for the pickup. The mid nineties ones just have Encore on the headstock, these and older I feel are the better ones, the newer ones have Encore Blaster on the headstock. As with most basses there are good and bad from any era, a place we use for rehearsals has one like mine but it's terrible, it could probably be made to feel nicer but visually it doesn't do it for me. I lucked out and got some really nicely grained wood on the body and neck.

The Lunatics (have taken over the asylum) - Fun Boy Three

Tina Turner's version of Proud Mary. I'll quite happily listen to the original by CCR, but there's just something about Tina Turner's version I dispise. Compounded by the way any woman has to do that horrible, bent over, arm pumpy shuffle thing whenever it comes on in a pub.

Ballad of J. J. Decay - Anti Nowhere League

Everything Starts With An E - E Zee Posee

What a lovely pair.

What connections are we talking about? I've done plenty of buying but never really seen any car analogies, I don't think.

Sun Arise - Rol... ah, this is awkward. 😬

Sun Arise - Rol... ah, this is awkward. 😬

Magic Carpet Ride - Steppenwolf

Vision Thing - Sisters of Mercy

My Baby is a Headf**k - The Wildhearts

Yeast Easy Riser - Julian Cope

I use it before him.

@Bassassin is your man. Shaftesbury were a brand name for the Rose Morris shop in Shaftesbury Avenue, I think they were made in the Matsumoku factory. I'd assume this is a later model having a hi-gain neck pickup and non wavy grover style tuners, but I could be wrong. I have an Aria (Matsumoku) with a toaster neck pickup and wavy grover style tuners which is early 70s. One way to identify a Matsumoku build is that there will be a little indent in the pickguard by each volume/tone control, if that's the original pickguard, which it does look like as they're usual slightly translucent. Lovely grain in the wood.

Gotta be walnut.

Train in Vain - The Clash

Has Mark D. Philips' apprentice graduated?

The funniest part of all this tone this tone that nonsense affecting the resonance of an guitar is that you then go and rest it against a big, fat, tone sucking belly.

Breakdown - Tom Petty

As @Dad3353@Dad3353 says, the bridge is a piezo unit so you'd want that and guts are contained in a large triangular(ish) metal box so could relatively easily be transplanted. A few people have done this with the six string guitars. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to just get the electronics though. I didn't like the look so gave it a pretty extensive makeover. There's a thread on here from years ago but I think the pictures were lost. From this, To this, And just to prove it can be, and is, gigged without worry,

Of course... in fact I've got two Variaxes! 😂 I was going to put a fretless neck one one, just to see, but haven't yet. I've got plenty of other basses as I like the aesthetics as much as the sound, and money in the bank was doing nothing and money in the right bass just increases. The Variaxes might be the wrong basses but they were cheap when I bought them and have earnt their keep. Edit: That's not my demo BTW, just incase you thought it was. 👍