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The bobbin should be attached to the caddy by two phillips head screws as in the pic below. The screw holes in the bobbin are often slightly off centre from the factory, hence the wonky alignment. Easy enough to adjust by slightly filing out the holes in the caddy to provide enough wiggle room to set it straight.

😅 haha, the holy grail of bass provenance!

I was thinking the halo outlined the shape of the coil. The curious thing with your pic is that it doesn't seem to show any mag flux along the centreline where the poles are.

This is curious. Here's a flux pic of the Benedetti SCs in my Excess and the mag field (blue) shows through the centreline of the pickup where the poles are. On the pic above the flux seems to be showing as a halo rather than through the centreline. Having said that, I don't know why mine are showing a white halo!

I've used Accu.co.uk several times to source replacement screws of various sizes. Excellent service and you can buy small quantities. If you know the thread size and length of the screw you should be able to find a replacement there. Here's an example: https://www.accu.co.uk/metric-cap-head-screws/3864-SSCF-M6-10-A2

I've just looked through the FI V4 manual, partic the editing section, which has slightly blown my mind! Very impressive synthesizer engine - 4 oscillators, lots of filter options, full ADSRs etc. I really like the PC editing option as well, much more intuitive than having to select each parameter one at a time using the tiny screen on the pedal. I wish the Enzo X had that option. On the other hand, I've watched quite a few demo vids of the FI but none of them match up to the huge lush sounds the Enzo can produce. I guess a good part of that is down to it being monophonic vs the 6-voices of the Enzo. Compared with the MXR bass Synth though, the FI offers much more in the way of sound building and editing capabilities - not to mention 99 footswitchable patches and Midi in/out. Available from musicstore.com for £261 which is cheaper than the MXR. Why is everyone so excited about the MXR when the FI can do so much more for around the same price or less?

The MXR Bass Synth is out of stock everywhere so I thought I'd look around and see what else I could find and came across the Meris Enzo X - https://www.meris.us/product/enzo-x/. Has anyone tried one of these? It's around twice the price of the MXR (£599 at Andertons) but the synth engine and tweakability is much more comprehensive than the MXR (eg. full independent ADSR envelopes for filter and amplitude, 6 fully polyphonic voices available simultaneously, can be triggered directly by bass/guitar or via midi, 99 footswitchable memory patches etc). It sounds fabulous, here's a demo.

Here's a better comparison with the 4003 pic adjusted to have the same overall length. Much easier now to see how they've cobbled it together with minimum new tooling and just repositioning the bridge and bridge pup.

Having done a side-by-side photo comparison, the proportions and layout of the 4030 look quite different to me. The overall length (bottom pin to top of headstock) of the 4030 appears to be longer. I wonder if that's just an illusion - perhaps the 4003 pic wasn't taken exactly face on? Both pics are from BassDirect. It would be interesting to know if the overall length is the same as a 4003 if BD could do a quick check. Regardless of that, the top strap pin on the 4030 is opposite fret 15 which, I would expect, makes it more prone to neck dive. On a 4003 it's opposite fret 13 which (to me) is already a bit marginal. It would have made more sense to move the bridge somewhat less severely to the right which would have shortened the overall length and improved the balance. The other difference is pickup positions. The bridge pup looks about right but the neck pickup is proportionally in a completely different position to a 4003. I actually prefer the idea of the neck pup being closer to the bridge, but it will sound different. Overall it looks like a bit of a half hearted attempt at a true short-scale version. I certainly wouldn't pay a premium for it over a regular Ric!

Just bought a pedal from Alex who was kind enough to reply to my wanted ad. Good chap to deal with, quick delivery and pedal in excellent condition. Thanks Alex!

Thanks for the reply!

That's interesting, the manual says smoother to the right...

The SA demo vid only has a few seconds on the Bias control. I've read the manual (which says CW is smoother and CCW is fuzzier) but how does it work in practice? Does it add something different to what you can get from the triode/pentode and drive controls?