NickA

Do let us know if it works. Did my last gig with my right index finger super glued together 😂

Fantastic. Love a bass project. My 1890s German bass had the same neck damage (it fell over). Also had ( mysteriously) some big brass screws holding the neck to the dovetale bit at the bottom. New neck, inc grafting the original scroll onto it, cost ( the insurance) £4000! Great to see someone doing a DIY .

Piezo for sure. Usually a connection between the piezo element and the cabling has gone open circuit. Very hard or impossible to fix sadly. I had a shadow one ( similar) go down that way, separated the two halves and found one side was ok and still useable.

What manner of bass is it? Mine is a quite old carved jobbie and has several repairs inside ( glued across cracks) some of those came loose and rattled... also the fingerboard wasn't well fixed to a wedge between it and the neck, that buzzed a bit till it fell over and the whole fingerboard came off. On my cello it's usually seams coming apart ..you can find those by going around the edges and giving the front / back a sharp tap every few inches with fingers or a small rubber mallet. Current most common rattle is the piezo pickup or several times the screw up bit of the jackplug in said pickup not being screwed up tightly ( IE not the bass at all). Tuners are a common issue but wouldn't be fixed by what you did with the cushion.

I'm not surprised at £2k as a new scroll and the front off to fix the big crack is a lot of work ..and skilled "work" don't come cheap. Lots of basses get skipped as the repair cost is more than the value ..which is a shame. Hope the new owner can save it.

Rumbles are not great with double bass. You can spend out on preamps and tweak eqs till the world ends and still not get a great sound. Or count your pennies and go Markbass, pjb, aer, acoustic image..... Chances are the audience won't notice, but you get a nice warm feeling from sounding good.

Silver wound gut = expensive, short lived, poor tuning stability, turn your fingers black, the outer windings wear through, come unwound and cut your fingers. Sounded wonderful on my dad's 18th c cello.... but even that has gone to it's new owner wearing tungsten wound steel. If you have a really fine bass, unlimited funds and are hunting for that last 1% ..then go for it. But for ordinary mortals with sub £50k instruments, there are probably more cost effective ways to improve the sound. My own bass (1880s German) has wound synthetics on it and my cello (1900 french) has gone tungsten. Just fine. Miss the attack and woody tone of the eudoxas I used to use... But not at today's prices.

Seems some confusion about the alloy. Warwick ( in translation ) say brass but everyone else says they are "bell bronze"... including in this Warwick / framus video: https://youtu.be/sbzmWEDXX3s?feature=shared But they're all copper alloys with various amounts of zinc, tin, aluminium phosphorus etc etc. Normal brass would be very soft and it tends to chip easily, so if the frets really were standard brass I'd worry about stainless strings. But I'll bet they're not!

On my other fretted bass. Like NYXLs but a bit brighter and slightly lower tension. Last well too. Nowhere near as bright as new rotosound or elite stainless... but those aren't bright for long.

I think they're bronze not brass ( copper + tin not copper + zinc) and really quite tough. Lots of people use stainless rounds with their Warwicks. Though they are usually quite bright for an already bright sounding bass. My dolphin has stainless frets which are super hard, and I've those nyxl (nickle?) strings on it ...so I can't really speak from experience.

Wish I had space for another bass.....I'll keep spreading the word tho.

Firewood. What a shame.

Dead strings and a copperhead ...gonna be dark and thumpy ☹️. Cruise ship tho... Will anyone be listening?

Spiros or Eva Pirazzis . Spiros are best for that modern long sustain mwah sound ( Eddy Gomez), less good if you like a more old school thud (Mingus).