Dan Dare

Maybe put some clean, new screws into the holes?

This is what I did. I used hard white plastic to fill the slots, so I have a visual guide for intonation. It also helps in that the plastic won't compress as much as thin wood veneers (which helps to lessen the amount the neck will bow - the frets help keep it straight under tension and you don't want to run out of truss rod adjustment). It's very important to sand/smooth an accurate, even profile onto the fingerboard. You'll also need to file the nut slots as the action will be too high once the frets are removed.

They won't be making their own stuff. If the strings come from a half decent factory, they could be fine.

Four KT120s? Must have a serious power supply on board. Nice piece of kit.

If you like the PJB sound, why not get a power amp and additional cabs for when you need to make more noise and drive them via the preamp out on the Suitcase? I've become something of a PJB fanboi in recent years. Started with a Flightcase and liked the sound, so added a couple of C4s and a power amp for more of the same. Have subsequently acquired 3 of the older PJB 4B cabs (which I really like). None of the cabs, which were all used but mint - PJB stuff tends not to be bought by hooligans - cost me more than £250 (all but one were around £200). It's handy, in that I can take out as much or as little as I need and because the individual components of my rig are small, it's an easy carry.

At £6 a packet, has to be worth a punt. Getting what you pay for is relative. The price of strings at the factory gate is tiny compared to the retail price by the time the importer, wholesaler, retailer, Uncle Tom Cobley & All have added their percentages (standard retail markup alone on musical stuff is 100%).

Try Lab Gruppen, Camco, Powersoft or MC2. All light, all seriously nice and all seriously expensive.

If you don't have a speaker connected, you will need to use a dummy load for a valve amp, unless you like paying for new output transformers.

Exterminate. Exterminate.

Commenting about under-rated musicians is an over-rated pastime 😁

Remember it? I did it just yesterday.

Fever, Got the Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu, I Don't Need no Doctor.

Those crazy prices on eBay usually mean an item is out of stock. It saves a seller from having to take their listing down and then reinstate it. The price automatically adjusts to something ludicrous once an item is sold out so people won't buy it. The seller will then revise to show a sensible price once he has stock again.

You may miss the slam you get from a big power amp and pre combination if you get something like a TH or similar mini head. Why not keep the Aggie pre' (which is a nice bit of kit) and look for a lightweight power amp - Lab Gruppen or similar? eBay often has Martin power amps (which are re-branded Labs) selling used for not too much money. I picked one up to use with my PA monitors not so long ago.

Just to add another suggestion to the expensive end of things, AER Amp One.

How much do you want to spend? Tiny + good bass sound can be expensive - something like a PJB Bass Cub or Double Four, for example.

A lot of those appear to have 4, not 5 bolt holes.

I think GHS's suggestion is sound. I had that problem when I tried Tomastik flats. The A is very skinny/low tension. I had to wind the bridge saddle almost off the thread of the adjuster bolt to get the intonation near correct. It still wasn't perfect, but the saddle would have fallen off the bolt had I adjusted it any further. I gave up in the end and swapped it for a D'Addario Chrome, which is slightly heavier. So if you're having to wind it in the opposite direction and the string is much heavier than the one it replaced, that would make sense.

I think Beedster has it right. The classic J bass sound I refer to is probably not hi-fi, especially with the wiring routing one pickup via the other's pot However, it just sounds so right, to my ears anyway. The J Retro turns the instrument into more of a competent Jack of All Trades, at the expense of that one sound that we love a J bass for.

The original question was who leads - bass or drums? The answer, imho anyway, is neither. I'm not being facetious here, but we - bassists and drummers - are the rhythm section (I'm obviously referring to bands). We don't "lead" (or we shouldn't, ideally). As such, we should support the melody instruments if a piece is instrumental, taking the lead from whoever may be soloing (if someone is), or if a song, the singer, again taking the lead from him/her. We should attempt to work together, with neither leading nor following the other. There will be cues that each may give the other, but that will change from moment to moment.

Neither.

Plastic beer bottle crate. Nice and lightweight.

Odd that, rather than him sorting out his issue, everyone else is expected to fit around him. I'd wager that, far from using a Brian May tanner, he is using a light pick and digging too hard into the strings. Used to play with a guy who did just that and who always broke strings because he pushed against them with his thumb in order to compensate for the fact that his cigarette paper pick would bend rather than shift the strings. Could never get it through to him that he needed to use a heavier pick and to improve/lighten his picking technique. But then, he was a guitar player...