Happy Jack

Just to re-frame the question, why would it have to be a 4-string P body? Wouldn't a 5-string P body make the neck pocket issue pretty much go away, Shirley?

Worst rattle/buzz I ever had was on a 1965 Precision, where it sounded as if the trussrod was about to leap clean out of the bass every time I played a fretted G#. Spent ages fiddling and faffing with everything nearby until I gave up and took it to a luthier. He put a drop of superglue on the E-string tuner, where the cloverleaf meets the shaft. End of.

My only concern would be where to rest my thumb. I can see myself adding an ashtray to that ...

OK, things have moved along pretty smartly and the Kolstein is now GONE. I was contacted by a long-time lurker, a pro bassist who prefers to keep a very low profile so I'll mention neither his name nor that of his luthier, and his plan is to do as near a complete restoration to original as possible. He can then consider what mods - if any - he wants to make. I've given him the bass (as in no money changing hands, although he did offer) on the agreement that he'll keep a photographic record of his work, what he discovers, what needs to be done. Since he doesn't post here, the plan is that he'll send his photos to me, and I'll post them here. Sad to relate, his very first photo is desperately unhelpful ... I had no idea that chunk/shard/splinter was missing and Thwaites didn't mention it when they inspected the bass. ☹️ I can only assume that it went 'ping' at the gig and was swept up by the cleaners the next next morning. Ah well ...

I took the debris back to Thwaites in Bushey. When they'd finished laughing, they said their preliminary estimate for repairs would be £2000 but that might well increase depending on what they found. At which point I went off in a different direction. So here I am with all the parts I need to make a broken, unplayable Kolstein Busetto. What to do ... what to do ... I see three choices: Chuck the whole lot in a skip and walk away quickly, whistling tunelessly and looking unconcerned; Break for parts and sell them individually - there's some good stuff there for them's as wants it; Try and be at least a little imaginative. So here's my Starter For 10. Everything you see in those photos (and nothing you don't see) is free to any Basschatter who has a genuine use for some/all of the parts, perhaps for the repair of DBs, perhaps for some weird EUB project (who knows?), but above all someone who will make sensible, constructive use of all this stuff. I don't have a Jiffy bag large enough to take all this, so we're talking either collection from Harrow HA1 or a sociable beer somewhere not too, too far from here.

Once upon a time there was a bass, a happy bass, a bass that enjoyed being owned by Basschatters such as @bassace and @Clarky. It was a fragile wee thing and needed a reasonable amount of upkeep and maintenance, because it always looked as if it was about to collapse into (as @Owen puts it) a bunch of matchsticks. But I loved it to bits, played hundreds of gigs with it, and asked myself, "What's the worst that could happen?". And then, one day, the worst happened. Are you familiar with the expression an exploded diagram? You are? Excellent! Here are some exploded photographs ...

That is some serious string spacing ...

Yup, that's exactly it. However, it is surprisingly easy to get the string routing wrong and end up with randomly turning tuners. 🙄

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/weezer-bassists-wife-shot-by-l-a-cops-booked-for-attempted-murder/ File under "couldn't make it up".

Has anyone started a thread about Tone Formica?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2v0l38mgro

My strategy? Buy nothing, sell nothing, wait and see. I suspect that whatever you do for the next year, you'll end up later wondering if you'd have been better off doing the opposite. When in doubt, do nowt.