Ok done some more, assisted by Gin and Tonic & Old Jamaica !... Though sometimes hindered by the cat who wanted to help by sitting on it...
Anyway, the scratchplate needed a bit taking off at the neck joint end as I'd moved the neck back, so a bit of sandpaper glued round a piece of dowel made a good round 'file' to do this, constantly comparing with the neck til it fitted. the scratchplate also needed opening up a bit for the pick up casings, as they were slightly too big and wouldn't pass through the apertures. This done I fixed the PUs into the body, packed out underneath with the foam they came in, they needed moving slightly to suit the S.Plate ( from where the originals were fixed in this body, very wonky anyway ! ) Then out came the Woolworths finest soldering gun and fixed the PU wires to the appropriate pots, this done all was stuffed inside and scratchplate pressed down, it was a nice snug fit and was happy to lay in place nicely without having to do any bullying !
Next making the holes and screwing it down to the body, the holes needed careful 'digging' so they didn't go off centre and pull the s.plate out of line..I found my Granddad's old bradawl a good hole starter, then did the pilot holes with a little pin chuck thing rather than blat away with an electric drill. All fixed down, before going further I plugged the whole shebang in to make sure I was getting a signal from the PUs by tapping with a screwdriver, and trying tone and vol..all good so far. using the same tools I did the bridge pilot holes in the new slightly shifted positions and screwed that down.
At this point thought I might as well bung some strings on and see what it does, this achieved with some random used strings I tuned them up in stages and left the whole lot a whole tone flat for now , plugged in and the thing actually sounds pretty good, the Maida Vale PUs, bought from one of the guys on here, sound great and on first impression I can highly recommend these as a good very reasonably priced PU ( made by a guy in the UK too ! )
I'll need to take the neck off and shim it etc to get an action I like and do a few bits and bobs ( I strung it up without even the little string tree button ) but I'd say it's looking fairly successful for a bung it together from random parts bass !