Hellzero

The external lug (on the right when you look from the top of pot) opposed to the pickup input is certainly not grounded. 😉

And if everything is ok, as @Rexel Matador said, string it up to check all alignments.

In fact, the neck certainly isn't 90° to the pocket, but is tilted a bit more to again be aligned with the bridge, the saddles to be precise. Simply put a long enough straight ruler on the whole neck directly on the frets and it should be just very very slightly above the saddles, like this, thanks to @Andyjr1515 : If it's lower, simply shim the neck by putting a ... shim close to the bridge in the neck pocket. If it's too high, put the shim at the opposite end of the neck pocket, but it's quite rare.

If it helps, I have this Excel file with all you need and more. Pickup Positions For Many Makes Of Bass.xlsx

Generally, I measure these 34 inches (864 mm) scale distance from the nut to the place where the D saddle should be, which is more or less what you're doing. It's not a rookie question at all and you were right to ask it. Also check the parallelism with the neck to be sure the bridge is correctly centered.

It was his cousin, Charles Haznovoice.

More than one, three... 🤣

I like the way you're "rescuing" this old project @MichaelDean ! 👍👌

A bit further away in the alphabet.

And here is my Le Fay Remington Steele 6 RHT CC CAP Big Block bought brand new by my wife and offered to me:

That's the question...

The problem with strings is everything going between the wounds, including gunk and corrosion. The Elixir way prevents both, the others just prevents corrosion. So what's to bin?

The effect of a fully grounded shielding is silence, so shielding the pickup cavities will have a huge impact on the final signal to noise ratio.

First of all, all shieldings wherever they are must be grounded otherwise it's useless. Don't forget to shield the pickup(s) cavity too and star ground it. All the wires going to earth have to be star grounded including the wire coming from the bridge. Star grounding simply means that all these wires come to a single point, here, for example, in the control cavity on the copper. Is it clear enough? Do you understand the rest of the diagram?

Quite easy, but harder to explain to a 5 years old kid, but I'll try. I'm on my third coffee, so it will help.

Can you show that diagram?

Or even more... but, all considered, it's almost the entry price of a Fodera...

In fact, the preamp you had was a boost only model, so no center detent here as it starts flat at the zero position, and there are plenty, not only by John East. Sometimes, reading the manual helps a lot. 😉

Typical from the Dobbratz brothers. 🤣

No charges on gifts but you'll need to put a value on the CN23 (or CN22) as 0 is not accepted, so it needs to be 1. Customs can be very binary. 🤣

Already looks gorgeous. 😍

Yep, 3 gear boxes in a row for my ugly Talbot VF1. 🤪

If you're in the EEC, there's an interesting bass in Germany with a Bogart carbon neck: https://www.bassic.de/kleinanzeigen/g-l-usa-jazzbass-mit-bogart-carbonhals-und-emgs.42705/

Overrated: TalkBass. Underrated: BassChat.

It's a Vester, Mick, not a Vesta... 😉