The bass has always had issues, due in no small part to my slightly tw*ty design brief to the builder, which involved a lot of having cake and eating it type stuff. In my defence, I was only 21 at the time, so the recklessness of youth etc etc.
It's a maple through neck- The body is indeed imbuya, which is called walnut even though it's not walnut, according to wikipedia (who knew??). Ebony board with rather nice abalone block inlays.
There was originally an active circuit on it, but that made terrible hissing noises- the original builders strong point was not wiring- so I had it removed, and now it sounds dead.
I always thought it was extra long scale- mainly because I couldn't reach the first fret- obviously I never actually measured it or anything like that!
In short, this bass has been largely unplayable for more than a quarter of a century, which frustrates me enormously.
So I'm very happy that Andy has agreed to take this on. He seems to specialise in turning very fiddly no hopers into cracking instruments, so I have high hopes.
Sincere thanks for doing this Andy. I look forward to developments.