tauzero

How about replacing the bass pot with stacked treble/bass and getting a rotary 3-way switch with which you could have all three of the options on the last page of the Bartolini instructions?

I would have thought you'd be able to fit the tuners onto the body if using Guykers - they might overhang a bit though. From front to rear fixing screw hole is 45.5mm.

I think you'd have to wait until you'd got the fingerboard off before working out the length of truss rod you'd need. I would guess at 460mm - https://www.blackdogmusic.co.uk/product/double-action-truss-rod-360mm400mm420mm-440mm-460mm-or-620mm/ has a variety of lengths (not many of which are ins tock).

The frets would correspond if the bridge saddles stayed in the same place. Assuming you did the chop at fret 3, that would become fret zero or the nut, and fret 15 would become the octave fret. Easy to confirm that that's the case by measuring fret 3 to fret 15 and fret 15 to the bridge, which would be the same, or putting a capo on fret 3 and checking the octave harmonic is at fret 15.

... prices seem to have headed upwards. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275592988998 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/285000056156 The far less desirable headed ones seem to be cheaper.

I wouldn't want to slide my fingers along that, it looks like shellgrip. I'm sure it's actually nice and smooth, but in my mind my fingertips would be gouged to the bone.

Is there a compelling reason not to use a mini toggle?

That and the Ocean Inlet one both look interesting.

It looks well worth it, although if you found the pickups a bit lacking in clarity, you would need to budget another couple of hundred quid for a pair of Aguilars or more for the Nordstrands. The fingerboard is Richlite - @Andyjr1515 built a neck using it for @fleabag so one of them might have a comment on what it's like. From having a quick look back at this: I think any issues Andy had with it were with the fretting part and sticking it to anything.

That's the one, the one with the team of six backing singers. Self Esteem. A name redolent of narcissism if ever there was one.

Ibanez don't seem to be embracing fretlessnessesesses with any great enthusiasm - exactly the same amount of enthusiasm as they show for lefties, in fact. Five string variant only (I'm a 5-string player, but I recognise that the majority of bassists are 5-string impaired), and only the bass base model spec with very ordinary finish and the Bartolini pickups which are reasonable but a bit lacking compared to the Nordstrands in the EHB-15 series or the Aguilars which are a worthwhile upgrade for the EHB-10/EHB-12 series. I can't understand why you're bemused by this when the EHBs have been out for a couple of years and quite a few of us have them. Have they so far passed you by?

Black Sabbath at the New Street Odeon in Birmingham in '77 or '78. They were fine, but a friend who had seen them the night before told me that the support band (whose name he didn't mention) was brilliant. So I watched the support band - a band called Tanzder Youth, who were unlistenably bad. Went to the bar a couple of numbers in. I saw the friend a day or two later and commented that the support band were cr@p (stupid bloody filter thing). No, he said, a fantastic band, brilliant guitarist - Van Halen, their name was. Bah.

The one who did the dreadful cover version of, er, something pretty unforgettable?

Not my cup of tea, but they were good.

We wondered if he'd had a mild stroke or Bell's Palsy.

He's 40 years older and has ill-advisedly put eye shadow on the bags under his eyes. What I found frightening is that I remembered the lyrics to "You to me are everything" despite the fact I disliked it at the time, and time has done nothing to change that. Gabrielle sounded rather ropey - she was singing in tune but the tune wasn't what it once was. George Ezra was neither country nor Western, whatever Jools might have said. I liked Cat Burns though (and a nice F bass her bassist was playing).

What's the neck like? From the dimensions they give, it sounds like it would be rather chunky.

I'm still in...

I was resisting the temptation, especially as (until now) I've done my soldering at evenings and weekends, and the only purpose of Saturday and Sunday mornings is breakfast (which should not be eaten while soldering).

According to https://weldingmastermind.com/can-you-get-lead-poisoning-from-soldering-heres-the-truth/ there's both lead dust and lead contamination of fumes. I must admit to liking the smell of resin fumes.

I started playing rubber string basses with a Guild Ashbory. Sounded good but I hated the banjo-type tuners, and upgraded to a DeArmond Ashbory with proper tuners. I used that with a ceilidh band, switching between the 18" scale Ashbory, a 34" scale Warwick Thumb fretless, and a 42" scale NS WAV-4 EUB which was fun. I also bought an Ashbory Mk2 - one of 73 made. However, it's got a dreadful hum which I haven't diagnosed - it's part of my project pile for my retirement, which started today. Because I like 5-strings, I bought a Kala SUB 5-string - I'd rather an unfretted one but the SUBs didn't have a fretless 5-string option, and a Cali would have cost about five times as much. This one isn't mine but it looks the same, apart from the untrimmed but better spaced strings on mine. And finally, I've bought a Batmanking electroacoustic 4-string which I haven't used electrically yet but which seems a pretty good buy for under a ton. Again, the photo's not mine but apart from an extra turn or two of the A string round the tuner, there's no difference.

Do you use open strings a lot? If not, just shift your hand position up five frets and across one string. And if you do, just user a different open string.

You don't get the lead fumes from lead-free solder, which is rather the point. It's not enough to be a danger to a hobbyist but if you're soldering all day every day or doing flow soldering it is a hazard.

I always use 60/40 22swg multicore. It's still easily available on That Ebay.

You can get adaptors but you need to solder the SMD IC to them. For a typical 8-pin SMD IC, there aren't sockets available, unlike DIP ICs. I've got small soldering iron bits but I'm not very good at keeping things steady (including my hands) - I find it's the feeding of the solder that tends to go wrong.