rockpig

some rods are just a bit crap. it is possible a well made neck is very stiff and the string tension is not enough to bend it forward significantly. if your having trouble getting a playable action on it withour buzzing you could try stoning some relief into the frets by basically leaning on the neck to put a back bow in it and then levelling the frets. when you release the pressure on the neck the frets will be slightly forward bowed this would only need to be half a millimeter or so. what shape is the shim you fitted? the problem could be more to do with the neck angle.

I'vs got a U retro 01 in one off my instruments and the bettery lasts for months I guess you must have a short some where. does the battery get hot?

first have you tried raising the pick up height? another suggestion is put an EQ pedal between the bass and amp.

from the look of the cracks I would suggest you could easily glue them back up using animal glue and have a very clean repair. If you really want to go for a new body I'd go neck through retaining the original central boby section and neck. this way you don't have to remeasure the scale length etc just graft on new body.

the stingray pick up is positioned at about the same distance from the bridge as the space between the 2nd and third fret so that it sits under a harmonic node. if possible i would suggest stringing up the bass before routing the pidk up cavities and finding the node on the strings and then putting the pick up in under it.

I would recommend neoprene rubber for the job, it's the stuff they make wetsuits out off and tends not to compress too badly. I've managed to get offcuts of self adhesive neoprene from shops that do foam matresses and cut to order foam before, if there's nowhere like that near you grab the allparts stuuf above they have a uk site as well [url="http://www.allparts.uk.com/"]http://www.allparts.uk.com/[/url]