three

Really good to see this fixed (and in all its glory!). Great to see all the new images too - what a beautiful bass - the quality of work here is fabulous. The neck pocket and cavity are works of art in their own right. Then there’s the finish. I was a bit sceptical re: leds too but they come into their own in darker environments. Now I really want this

I think that Hellzero has the answer here! If you wish to have the ivory removed anyway (I would certainly understand this), I would contact the Jewellery School at Birmingham City University. The school has some brilliant jewellers and technicians and I suspect they’d be very willing to help. I can provide contacts by PM if useful.

This is helpful and I thought this might be the case - using connectors in the neck pocket and heel is the only way that I could conceive of powering LEDs (other than a battery/switch somewhere in the neck itself).

Curious - do you have a pic of the interior of the cavity and can you see how the wiring is routed to the neck? I’ve only had leds in neck-through basses but maybe removing the neck would reveal any connectors. A quick mail to Sims might be helpful - I’ve always found the company very responsive. Incidentally, a gorgeous bass! Also, are they definitely leds? Could simply be decorative markers set in a metal surround?

The Gallery has some lovely Wals in stock, though 12.5k seems a mere trifle. Take a deep breath… https://thebassgallery.com/search?q=wal

Not quite symmetrical but close

I was there on Wednesday in Manchester - the sound was extraordinarily good (where I was anyway) in a venue that is notorious for dreadful acoustics. There'd clearly been much thought and preparation applied to the engineering, and the band/team managed to pull-off some of the production quality of the later albums. Quite staggering really. A band that has included (and very sadly lost) a number of brilliant bass-players. My personal favourite was probably Alan Spenner, though the session player on the current tour recreated some of his lines pretty-much flawlessly (to my delight... and not insignificant envy).

Some great options discussed above IMO. With the budget you’re not far off a pair of Sennheisser HD650s and could probably pick up a B stock or almost new pair for £300. I found them very impressive with a good source, though clamping pressure was a bit fierce for me. If you can, and you’re out auditioning, try a pair of Audeze magna planars (just for fun). The LCD X is about £1k so massively out of budget (and the range goes up to around £5k!) though listening to a mate’s pair changed everything for me. A moving experience. I’m saving-up.

Not still in production but the Warwick Hellborg range had a stereo power amp at 250 a side - a monster with a tone all of its own (possibly the most overbuilt bass-specific power amp I've seen). I think that some of the bigger (fairly recent) TEs had stereo capability too.