Beedster

You can pick up used USA SVTs for around £600, wait a while and these non-USA Ampeg’s will be very very cheap. The days of big tube heads are sadly behind us

Yep, if I had £3k I'd buy another Wal, superb instruments, and one of the few that a) you can't recreate more cheaply (i.e., you can build something every but as good as the best Fender from Warmoth/Allparts and aftermarket hardware, but you ain't going to get anywhere close to Wal) and b) will almost certainly have gained value should you need to sell it.

Thanks mate, it's a lovely instrument. The real pleasure of playing around with Fender-alike bitsas is that you can keep chopping and changing parts until you get the perfect bass. And then sell it for about what it cost, and start again

Active in a Precision, get a P-Retro (used as discontinued). But passive is also pretty versatile if done well, speak to John/Kiogon about versatile passive circuits, he's just built me one for a P/J bas that does pretty much everything I need from a bass. Wood? You can pick up Warmoth and Allparts bodies and necks for £100-£150 if you keep your eyes open I'm getting the feeling I've got most of the parts you might need!

There you go mate

Simon and I shared a brief few moments at an undisclosed central London location today, during which a rather well engineered item hailing from Petaluma CA changed hands. To say that Simon was patient, accommodating and a thoroughly good egg would be an understatement. He is also a man who knows his gear. One of the good guys

I put together most of the below basses, all high spec by factory built comparison models (Fender etc), for around or under the O/Ps budget. Most are Warmoth or Allparts necks/bodies, which are generally a step up from standard Fender quality (IMO of course). All are outstanding players and solid as a rock. You'll see a theme......

Ha ha, love it

At this rate the bass will be done by Friday and cost about £300

I’ve always wondered why so many bassists use slap in demos etc when it appears to be such a little used technique in the real (recording and public performance) world? It’s a bit like a demo for a lawn mower showing how well it can be used to carry the shopping home. I suspect however that it is a convention so hard-wired into our collective consciousness, that even if we are never going to use it, deep down we need to know whether a prospective purchase is good for slap. Just in case.

I concur

I’d recommend buying all parts used, you’d be amazed at what you can find

Great stuff! Keep your eyes on eBay and Basschat, and prepare yourself for a few weeks at least, sometimes months, of trial and error. But it’s great fun and really satisfying. Putting together a bitsa is also very easy if you’re sticking to Fender-type instruments because 9 times out of 10 things fit, or can be made to fit with a little tweaking. It allows a lot of customisation. For example, I love the sound of Jazz Basses but hate the skinny necks. I have two bitsa Jazzes with Precision necks, and love them both. I have also built my perfect bass, a P/J fretless that feels like a Wal to play, and even looks a little Wal-sequel! Some necks resonate beautifully on one body and not on another, sometimes a high-mass bridge improves a bass, sometimes not. The list of combinations that can influence either tone and/or playability is pretty long. Possibly the best bass I have at present has a huge gap at the heel/pocket, a crap lightweight bridge, cheap PUPs, and a couple of misplaced bits of hardware, but it just works, certainly as well as instruments costing 3-4 times as much. Trial and error is king, and there are many surprises to be had from relatively unpromising sources. Have fun mate, give me a shout if you need parts Chris