Beedster

Yes agreed, but the right degree of finishing (I went fine but not too fin with the sandpaper), and the right oil and wax and even a linear and relatively low contrast grain can look good, I'm about to do the same to this walnut body, although as you can see, I've been slightly more fortunate with the grain.....

Having sanded a similarly finished bass - and regretted both the time and the results - I'd recommend a stripper, it will take a few coats and some elbow grease, but it will be a whole lot less hassle and will significantly reduce the risk of over-sanding

Mmm, that could be a quick and easy job or it could be a lengthy nightmare. It will almost certainly look better stripped and oiled but as you say, it's not an interesting or even especially attractive grain, so the improvement might be marginal at best. I stripped an ash body a while back and used black tinted wax, which lifted the grain nicely, might work on this bass?

Expensive is, to my mind, linked to the concept of a thing being more than it's worth. A Warmoth Precision with woodwork coming in at around £600 with perhaps another £400 on high quality components, gives me a FCS level instrument at £1000, and IME I'd have to spend upwards of £3000 to get anything better from Fender. So, if I'm buying a Precision, anything over £1000 is not only expensive, but unnecessary expense

IME a change in bridge can have the effect of micro EQ (change overall tonality), micro filter (notch certain frequencies), micro envelope shaper (change attack/sustain), or micro compressor (even things out a bit). On most instruments switching bridges makes little real difference, but on some it can be tangible and helpful. It's always worth some trial and error

Thinking on this, not just his music but his world view was a lot of things that Springsteen’s was in the 70’s/80’s

This is my solution, single PUP wired to jack 🙂

Stainsby Girls was indeed a great song, very Springsteen 👍

He’s always been there hasn’t he, calmly doing his thing. If I was gonna be a rock star, I’d want to be the Chris Rea type of rock star. RIP Chris 🙏

Lovely bass, and yes some basses prefer low tech bridges 👌

Hard to tell from the clip but wouldn’t surprise me, it appears on so many early-mid 70’s clips. It always seemed an odd choice for a house bass given I suspect Charlie Tumahai was the only even vaguely famous player who routinely used one at the time 🤔

Is that the famous BBC Tele?

Genius 😂

…. suspect some new soundholes are going to help 👍

I think we often take our lead from orchestral players while forgetting that when there’s 8 or more players in a section individual tuning matters less. And yes, I’d prefer to be in tune whatever it takes 👍

I’ve been there, although ironically the worst gig I ever did (reminiscent of the famous Richie Benaud quote ‘there’s only three things wrong with English Cricket, they can’t bat, they can’t bowl, and they can’t field’, albeit in my case I was out of tune, out of time, and out of style) I was asked to join a Jazz Trio by a member of the audience who turned out to be quite well known….🤔

I have them because they reduces error, I rarely use them, but when I do I’m glad I installed them

To be fair again, they're also a business and while I can see the O/Ps point of view - that's an ugly bass - if they keep picking up the cost of returns on that basis they will make a loss on the sale. Personally if I were the OP I'd either suck up the cost of the return and ask for photos of the replacement, or travel in person to the store, which may or may not be possible.

I had exactly the same experience with two sets if Pyramid Golds, very frustrating

That’s really interesting 👍

To my mind the fact that Chris Wood, a highly creative virtuoso player known as much for his electric as for his upright playing, chooses to use a Hofner pretty much exclusively (occasionally seen with a Fender also), speaks volumes. I've never played one and often thought about it, but then remember that I really don't appear to get on with short scale basses

There’s a big thread on this 👍

If you post the dimensions of the circuit and battery I can tell you for sure, but I suspect the answer is no