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Amazingly I have one have one of these, bought from BC many years ago. Surprisingly for the body shape, It has no neck dive and is remarkably light weight. A really nice thing to play. Google it and you will find very little information about them (unless new info has appeared). At one time the only images I could find were of the BC listing of mine.

The game is up, you are really building a cigar box bass, the parts are leaning against the shed? In seriousness, following the build with interest (and a view to rig size reduction).

I use a set in my Chowny SWB-1 and rate them very highly, good range of tones available. They were also worked really well when I used them in a Warwick Corvette. Would happily buy another set.

Totally agree. Two different animals, energy levels in case a) and, for want of a better phrase, professional musicianship in case b).

If I could do the sets that GNR and EJ have delivered I would be a happy bunny. At 64,two 1hr sets give me something to think about and mine are rather more sedate than GNR.

My increasing failure as an older bass player is 'getting lost' in the simple basic stuff - how many verses, choruses have we done and then missing the cue. The (alleged) tricky stuff - turn round riffs, fill ins, key sequences I can still do. Getting in the zone and concentrating / bar counting is getting harder. It has been easier in the originals band than doing covers but I am not the bass player I was 40 years ago. IIRC @Beedster made an interesting comment about radio music a while back which I will echo. The quality /detail of bass reproduction (and general sound) of BBC DAB seems to have improved dramatically recently. I am noticing a lot more detail in the bass playing I hear on the radio. Quite a lot of what was 'simple'or 'easy' is not, I am hearing a lot of subtlety that was missed in my youth.

Stingray 5ers in massive price hike following Glastonbury..... no need to comment on the EJ mix, superb from the home TV perspective.

Where are you based (excuse the pun), someone local to you on BC could probably help you with this. Not me, since I am in a different country - Mid Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

GX 5 from memory, I picked up a nearly new XLS 1502 for far less than the quoted repair cost.

Cost of repairs - new main board and other parts plus labour / transportation exceeded the cost of replacing it.

You are me, and I claim my £5. I am still working on reducing the rate of bass blunders.

This why I like some older kit, chosen wisely it can be easily self repaired in the event of problems unlike my QSC power amp that totalled itself (switched on at the time but not doing any amplifying!).

@agedhorse mentioned the sloppy wiring / connections earlier Looking at the picture of the board there appear to be quite a few solder joints (of those that are visible) that want investigation / re flowing (in addition to the transformer connections needing heat shrink etc.). An interesting design decision that the bridge rectifier diodes do not have separate pads for the diode terminals and the incoming connections. If you (or someone) replaces the smoothing capacitors this would be the ideal time to tidy things up. It will be good when it is fully sorted:)

Tony Revell guitar headstock https://www.soundaffects.com/acoustic-guitars-c96/tony-revell-1997-blues-legend-in-natural-pre-owned-p18237 A similar bass appeared on here a while ago Tony was a close family friend, did work on some of my basses and our kids were school mates. As far as I know he is still in the Shropshire / Welsh border.

I have visions of the above chaps enacting some SB song titles, this would certainly encourage a full and frank discussion: A MATTER OF TIME ONLY WHEN YOU LEAVE CROSS THE LINE MOTIVATION TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT HOW MANY LIES MUSCLEBOUND FIGHT FOR OURSELVES NATURE OF THE BEAST

So many great songs from them. A northern friend of mine turned down playing with PS in the very early days. To this day he regrets his choice of accountancy over music. Every time I hear the line "Some things hurt more, much more than Cars and Girls", I am faced with my burning life question, what are these things that hurt much more than Cars and Girls?

Nearly half way now. I have donated earlier in the day.

The four I have built with flat fretboards have been 8mm thick. I have slotted two of them with the board glued on the neck blank. The other two are fretless. The downside of this is you are left with not much trussrod depth if you want a ~ 21/21mm depth. If (like me) you are ok with 'baseball bat' necks (think some Warwick basses) then all is good. I personally really like flat fretboards.

@WonkyOne, have you considered using a debt recovery company rather than the direct approach?

Yes to the latter and I still have great fondness for TP, to the point I still do quite a bit of stuff in Free Pascal (or Lazarus for graphical work). The Borland compiler is was quite something even on a 286, on modern hardware goes like SOAS It was all much simpler back the day . Topic drift but following @Smanth's foray making me use the grey matter again, I have started dabbling with various AI sources to create code. A serious game changer. The code it has created for me is very good other than one instance of trying to assign a boolean variable into a float variable, static type checking saves the day. Conversely I fed it some detailed questions on a materials science topic (I did three years postgraduate research in this field). By giving it a false (simple) initial statement it produced very convincing descriptions that are the opposite of the actual reality. The best AI 'flaw' I have read so far (elsewhere) is generated article references that are simply bogus, look real but are fictional.

Like you @FinnDave I have been playing for about 50 years, mostly on 34" basses. At 64 I am luckily not yet suffering arthritis, but age is taking its gradual toll on the hands. Over the last few years increasingly using short scales has made sustained playing easier. As per @Jonesy my SG bass is a good tool, really light. At the moment I am getting vast playing times on my Indian version Chowny SWB-1s (fretted and fretless). Build quality is excellent and they seem real bargains s/h. The Sandberg Lionel looks like a really safe bet.