Beedster

Mudbuckers are difficult beasts to tame, and whilst I’m happy to be proved wrong, I’m pretty sure not many reggae bassists use them. An active circuit might be a better bet?

Absolutely, and some neck sound great on pretty much all bodies. I've got two Warmoth necks that have made every bass they've been on sound a whole lot better.

And you can always try one of these, unbelievably light

How my DB gets to gigs

Harry, take a look at Alexander Technique and even yoga. Posture and pain is a big problem for bass players, human bodies weren't designed to stand pretty still for hours on end with a boat anchor around our necks. One or other - and sometimes simple weight training (squats and deadlifts) - have done the trick for a few musos I know. Good luck mate. C

So it’s better to think too little than too much?

Which has largely been my point all along. Plenty of guys are the full ticket, and still rip people off deliberately. He is not, and I doubt he does. So on this point I completely agree.

I know, but there might be very good reasons why he's unable to take advice (check out my earlier post). There's been far worse examples of dodgy dealings in this space; luthiers who've taken huge amounts of money for instruments that never materialised or were entirely substandard (and I'm talking 4-figure sums), guys who've deliberately sold fakes, eBay and BC sellers who've done a runner with the money etc. OK, some of them got caught, some of them didn't, and forums like this helped the buyers. fair enough. So, if the genuine intention of this thread is to stop him doing what he does, I would agree. But given how many previous similar threads there have been, it's pretty clearly not going to work. And if that isn't the genuine intention, I just don't see the point, unless it's an expression of some of the less attractive aspects of human nature, hence my post about bullying. As a human being, he might be any of a number of things; a misguided oddity or a cynical exploiter of other people's naivety. I have my suspicions hence my posting to object to the thread. I might be wrong, but a false positive in this context does no harm really.

I think an impartial look at this thread would suggest I have a point. I'm not defending his work, just his right to do what he does until a legitimate complaint to eBay or TS helps him see the error of his ways, prompts him to take a luthiery course, and become a leading if somewhat unexpected light of the UK guitar building industry. Until then, this thread feels like a feeding frenzy to me. If it was the first, I'd have commented and let it go, but there have been too many about this guy over the years, and I don't think it's the right way to do things on a community forum like this.

Perhaps this thread should be directed at eBay then?

One man's guardian of consumer rights is another man's bully

There's been a lot of that in this thread, or put another way, folks starting to clutch at straws as they realise that yes, to all intents and despite their sense of injustice, this is just another example of internet bullying, albeit by a bunch of middle-aged blokes with not much else to do apparently (I'm assuming they're all middle-aged with nothing else to do using the same logic by which they assumed age and inexperience of the buyers). If they are that angry with this guy, why don't they they contact eBay, or trading standards, or the guy himself. Given they're all so knowledgable, they could perhaps offer him some friendly advice?

Anything that's boring, borish, repetitive and predictable makes me yawn I'm afraid

Yawn

I live far from it, but there nothing wrong with aspiring to perfection