LeftyJ

Gibson once put competition stripes on their Tom Delonge signature ES, parallel to the strings: I like the Fender-style competition stripes on the Höfner a lot more than I thought I would! Looks very cool.

I hate it, but I love it Sad to see it beyond repair, but really cool plan and I look forward to the finished result!

As a lefty, I very rarely find anything lefty at all in a music store, let alone a bass that trumps my main axes. That said, I did visit a few Lefty Bass Days held by Leftybass.com at CMS Music in Duisburg, Germany and they had some excellent lefty basses there. One that still haunts me was a LeFay Herr Schwarz 5-string I played there in 2012. Literally almost everything about that bass was custom made for or by LeFay. No two control knobs were the same size, they went from large to small but very subtly and hardly noticable. The pickups were custom made for LeFay. The neck profile was like no other I've ever held: wide, thin and flat, and just the most comfortable 5-string neck I've ever played. The body was beautifully sculpted too. I own some fabulous basses, but that thing blew them all out of the water. The only thing that wasn't really for me was the rotary pickup selector switch instead of a pan pot or two volumes + coil switching on the bridge humbucker.

Right? Sire still does them though: Thomann

I loved my RS924, but it was the heaviest bass I've ever owned (it even beats my MC924's), and it has a very substantial neck. The one OP posted looks like a heavily modded RS824: replaced pickups, passive contols removed and replaced with a 3-band EQ, refinished, and rerouted for a larger bridge pickup at one point. Could still be a cool player, and at that asking price it seems very cool.

Those look like glue joints to me, where the wings join the through-neck. Very common when the top is glued before the wings are joined to the neck. I had a Human Base that was constructed that way too.

Let's see some of that S2 of yours! 😎

Wow, that's insane. I paid roughly the same for both my S2 Classics, but those are both very plain with a solid finish, no fancy woods, and bolt-on necks. This fretless one was pretty much top spec!

Wow, after finishing the neck that flame really pops! Beautiful piece of maple. This is turning out great!

Lovely! Why the battery rout though, when it's going to have passive controls? Are the Overwater pickups active?

I use an EBS NeoDrome 12-150 at home. It's a bit overkill really, but I love it. And it feels right at home in rehearsal spaces and at small gigs too. It doesn't have a cooling fan at all. At 14 kg it isn't particularly light due to the heavy plywood housing, but it's tough as nails and sounds great. At €450 used (but in brand new condition) mine wasn't exactly expensive either. You can sometimes find the regular Drome 12 (without neodynium speaker) for even less, and there's the Drome Classic too that's even more affordable because it's made in China. That one doesn't have a tweeter though, which is normally a major part of EBS's clean fullrange sound!

When I started playing 20 years ago, a lot of stuff I'd love to own now was still much more affordable. The hype around Wal wasn't as crazy as it is now, Warwick was still fairly affordable (a new German Corvette Standard for 600 euros! They charge at least twice that now. I won't even start about used prices), you could still buy a USA Fender under 1000 euros new (almost doubled now), and Fender's shortscale endeavours weren't as hyped up as they are now and therefore very affordable. I would have looked for a cool Wal Mk1, a Warwick Streamer Stage 1 5-string and a cheap lefty Fender Musicmaster or (rare as a lefty) Mustang.

Spot on I think!

Famous last words 😆 Is it that sexy 48 that Bass Direct had in stock? Congrats!

Those damn Japanese sellers and their crazy pricing.

I had a laminated woven carbon fibre nut on a custom ESP guitar, and it was great and looked neat. Pretty much like this: https://www.browndogbanjos.co.uk/carbon-fibre-nut-blanks-guitar-5016-p.asp

Looks great, and the price is fair too!

For the use you're describing, I would rather look at something like an EBS Valvedrive. It seems like it is exactly what you're looking for: a subtle, tube-driven overdrive pedal with a 3-band EQ and two modes that are accessible by footswitch independently from the on/off-footswitch. According to the manual, "The vintage character changes the tube timbre, eq and compresses the signal over the gain stage." The Le Bass looks cool, but I think it is an "always on" kind of pedal, where you either select channel A, channel B or both but with no option of bypassing the pedal. I'm not sure about this, but from what I gather it appears that way. Edit: nope, sorry. There is indeed a bypass mode on the Le Bass by simply tapping the footswitch of the channel that is currently engaged.

That's an interesting one! Looks like it uses the Warwick tailpiece, and the saddles look very much like those used on ABM Mueller bridges (like the monorail headless bridge I posted above). Looks nice, I like the look of a 2-piece bridge. The ones used by Mayones and Jerzy Drozd also look very appealing, and match well with the overall design of their basses.

Only thing I don't like about it is the claw that holds the ball end of the string slides freely over the finish of my bass body when I turn the tuning wheel.

I have played Elixir strings for years and love the feel and long-lasting brightness of coated strings, but try finding coated double-balls I use Status strings on both my S2's now and do like them, but they don't keep their brightness as long.

Out with the subtlety then, and in with some hot J-sized buckers! Ignore the broken English, and take a look at the Roswell hot rails.

That looks awesome! I've lusted after these before, and I loved the very yellow one that @wombatboter owned for a while. Do tell me more about the gauge of that B string! That looks HUGE.

Italia Modulo in Belgium: link.

Here's one with a happy ending: Not on Basschat, but I once responded to this ad on Leftybass.com by our own @whynot (no, I didn't actually save that screenshot that long. I just looked it up again ). I was slightly too late, it was already shipped to the USA! It always stuck with me though, I loved the plain look and the sharp contrast between the bright white body, the ultra black phenolic fingerboard, and the white epoxy Roman numeral inlays. I had never laid hands on a Status or any other graphite necked bass before, let alone heard one, but I had decided right there and then that I wanted one. Fast forward 11 years (!), this happened: The seller lived in the USA as a student when he bought it, but had moved back to Israel in the meantime. Again, someone was ahead of me, but still negotiating. Within a few days, I got a message the other potential buyer was no longer interested and we sealed the deal, and I couldn't be happier! It did turn out a fair bit more expensive because of import duties and VAT, but it was worth it. I still love that bass, and play it regularly. It looks even more fantastic in the flesh