Maude

What a lovely pair.

What connections are we talking about? I've done plenty of buying but never really seen any car analogies, I don't think.

Sun Arise - Rol... ah, this is awkward. 😬

Sun Arise - Rol... ah, this is awkward. 😬

Magic Carpet Ride - Steppenwolf

Vision Thing - Sisters of Mercy

My Baby is a Headf**k - The Wildhearts

Yeast Easy Riser - Julian Cope

I use it before him.

@Bassassin is your man. Shaftesbury were a brand name for the Rose Morris shop in Shaftesbury Avenue, I think they were made in the Matsumoku factory. I'd assume this is a later model having a hi-gain neck pickup and non wavy grover style tuners, but I could be wrong. I have an Aria (Matsumoku) with a toaster neck pickup and wavy grover style tuners which is early 70s. One way to identify a Matsumoku build is that there will be a little indent in the pickguard by each volume/tone control, if that's the original pickguard, which it does look like as they're usual slightly translucent. Lovely grain in the wood.

Gotta be walnut.

Train in Vain - The Clash

Has Mark D. Philips' apprentice graduated?

The funniest part of all this tone this tone that nonsense affecting the resonance of an guitar is that you then go and rest it against a big, fat, tone sucking belly.

Breakdown - Tom Petty

As @Dad3353@Dad3353 says, the bridge is a piezo unit so you'd want that and guts are contained in a large triangular(ish) metal box so could relatively easily be transplanted. A few people have done this with the six string guitars. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to just get the electronics though. I didn't like the look so gave it a pretty extensive makeover. There's a thread on here from years ago but I think the pictures were lost. From this, To this, And just to prove it can be, and is, gigged without worry,

Of course... in fact I've got two Variaxes! 😂 I was going to put a fretless neck one one, just to see, but haven't yet. I've got plenty of other basses as I like the aesthetics as much as the sound, and money in the bank was doing nothing and money in the right bass just increases. The Variaxes might be the wrong basses but they were cheap when I bought them and have earnt their keep. Edit: That's not my demo BTW, just incase you thought it was. 👍

I need reading glasses but don't wear them gigging as everything further away becomes blurred. A solution for reading setlists, rather than have one on the floor is to tape it to the back of the PA top speaker, which is usually just in front left of me. I also prefer this as I think it looks a bit crappy every time a band finishes a song they all look at the floor to see what's next. The audience don't always realise what the band are looking at the floor for and just think we're a bit miserable.

Line 6 released the Variax bass (700 & 705) in 2005 which emulated 24 basses including solid, semi, hollow and synth. Lots of folks don't like them but I really like mine. Rather than thinking of the settings as actual basses I just consider it to have a huge range of tones. As well as different tones the sustain and attack is different on different models. In a band setting they can sound great, especially a covers band if you want to try to copy original tones.

Now that's the sort of hunting I could get behind.

Land Of Fusion - Genesis

Stab Your Back - The Damned