Or get the offending speaker mended by Wembley Loudspeakers. They can pretty much repair anything that can go wrong with a speaker. Might cost about the same as a replacement, but at least it will be the same as the other speaker
Ooh, just seen a Fender Super Sonic in that met orange colour.. Rather nice!:
http://www.fender.com/en-DE/series/pawn-shop/pawn-shop-super-sonic-rosewood-fingerboard-sunfire-orange-flake/
I've done a couple without, just used a normal sanding block and they both worked fine. Unless you are actually changing the radius, I don't think it's really needed, more important to keep the board straight along the length, I reckon.
3 dodgy volume pots?!! That's really quite unlucky, or you were doing something to damage or overheat them in the process of changing them. Well done for fixing it though!
I'm so glad it worked out well! One does feel kind of responsible when one makes recommendations.
i think it should be made more widely known that there is pretty much no speaker problem that they can't fix, recones, magnet re-centring, the lot.
Another thing to consider is, with a black covered bass, it might not have the prettiest wood underneath! I imagine they'd save that for the clear and sunburst ones. Could be a bit of a lottery.
[url="http://www.mother-of-tone.com/lacquer.htm"]http://www.mother-of-tone.com/lacquer.htm[/url]
This might be an interesting read. This guy has a philosophy which some might consider "out there" but he is obsessed with removing the obstacles to good tone in his ultra-fi products, and there is this bit on lacquer on guitars.
The last gig I did, one of the other band's bassist said to me "I didn't know what the situation with gear was, so I didn't bring mine" I did laugh out loud at that, but did let him use my stuff as our drummer also plays for them.
It's clearly not fubar then, good news! It will probably be a dry joint somewhere or a slightly iffy socket. Any decent tech would be able to go over it and make it good as new.