LeftyJ

That looks absolutely stunning! Very classy. What is the little ferrule below the battery cover on the back of the body?

The Dark Night rises

I love these, and will always associate them with Peter Vink of Dutch bluesrock legends Q65. I mostly know him from his work with Ayreon though. He played one as his main axe for a long time, until he got a Lull and more recently a hideous Bo-el.

I'm a bit obsessed with preamps too, but I don't use more than one at a time. I own and have owned several preamps, both 19" rack-based and pedals. I currently own the EBS MicroBass II, Darkglass B7K (not the Ultra - and I strictly use it as an OD pedal. I feel the B7K Ultra is much more useful as a preamp because of the added footswitch to operate the distortion and bypass separately), an SWR Grand Prix (Grand Pre, get it? ), the Ampeg SVP-CL and the Ampeg SVP-PRO. The latter is the core of my current rehearsal and live rig. On stage it goes straight into the FOH, in our rehearsal space it goes into the power amp in of my EBS HD350 and through an EBS ProLine 4x10. I generally don't really like graphic equalizers, but I love this preamp! It's the preamp section of the all-tube SVT 2 Pro. I have also owned a Hartke VXL Bass Attack (my first venture into preamp pedals, and a great one at that!) and some modelling stuff I didn't get along with very well. The MicroBass II was my main tone tool for a long time when I was in a coverband, I must have owned it for over 15 years now. I still like it, but don't really use it anymore.

Gibson once put competition stripes on their Tom Delonge signature ES, parallel to the strings: I like the Fender-style competition stripes on the Höfner a lot more than I thought I would! Looks very cool.

I hate it, but I love it Sad to see it beyond repair, but really cool plan and I look forward to the finished result!

As a lefty, I very rarely find anything lefty at all in a music store, let alone a bass that trumps my main axes. That said, I did visit a few Lefty Bass Days held by Leftybass.com at CMS Music in Duisburg, Germany and they had some excellent lefty basses there. One that still haunts me was a LeFay Herr Schwarz 5-string I played there in 2012. Literally almost everything about that bass was custom made for or by LeFay. No two control knobs were the same size, they went from large to small but very subtly and hardly noticable. The pickups were custom made for LeFay. The neck profile was like no other I've ever held: wide, thin and flat, and just the most comfortable 5-string neck I've ever played. The body was beautifully sculpted too. I own some fabulous basses, but that thing blew them all out of the water. The only thing that wasn't really for me was the rotary pickup selector switch instead of a pan pot or two volumes + coil switching on the bridge humbucker.

Right? Sire still does them though: Thomann

I loved my RS924, but it was the heaviest bass I've ever owned (it even beats my MC924's), and it has a very substantial neck. The one OP posted looks like a heavily modded RS824: replaced pickups, passive contols removed and replaced with a 3-band EQ, refinished, and rerouted for a larger bridge pickup at one point. Could still be a cool player, and at that asking price it seems very cool.

Those look like glue joints to me, where the wings join the through-neck. Very common when the top is glued before the wings are joined to the neck. I had a Human Base that was constructed that way too.

Let's see some of that S2 of yours! 😎

Wow, that's insane. I paid roughly the same for both my S2 Classics, but those are both very plain with a solid finish, no fancy woods, and bolt-on necks. This fretless one was pretty much top spec!

Wow, after finishing the neck that flame really pops! Beautiful piece of maple. This is turning out great!

Lovely! Why the battery rout though, when it's going to have passive controls? Are the Overwater pickups active?

I use an EBS NeoDrome 12-150 at home. It's a bit overkill really, but I love it. And it feels right at home in rehearsal spaces and at small gigs too. It doesn't have a cooling fan at all. At 14 kg it isn't particularly light due to the heavy plywood housing, but it's tough as nails and sounds great. At €450 used (but in brand new condition) mine wasn't exactly expensive either. You can sometimes find the regular Drome 12 (without neodynium speaker) for even less, and there's the Drome Classic too that's even more affordable because it's made in China. That one doesn't have a tweeter though, which is normally a major part of EBS's clean fullrange sound!

When I started playing 20 years ago, a lot of stuff I'd love to own now was still much more affordable. The hype around Wal wasn't as crazy as it is now, Warwick was still fairly affordable (a new German Corvette Standard for 600 euros! They charge at least twice that now. I won't even start about used prices), you could still buy a USA Fender under 1000 euros new (almost doubled now), and Fender's shortscale endeavours weren't as hyped up as they are now and therefore very affordable. I would have looked for a cool Wal Mk1, a Warwick Streamer Stage 1 5-string and a cheap lefty Fender Musicmaster or (rare as a lefty) Mustang.

Spot on I think!

Famous last words 😆 Is it that sexy 48 that Bass Direct had in stock? Congrats!

Those damn Japanese sellers and their crazy pricing.

I had a laminated woven carbon fibre nut on a custom ESP guitar, and it was great and looked neat. Pretty much like this: https://www.browndogbanjos.co.uk/carbon-fibre-nut-blanks-guitar-5016-p.asp

Looks great, and the price is fair too!

For the use you're describing, I would rather look at something like an EBS Valvedrive. It seems like it is exactly what you're looking for: a subtle, tube-driven overdrive pedal with a 3-band EQ and two modes that are accessible by footswitch independently from the on/off-footswitch. According to the manual, "The vintage character changes the tube timbre, eq and compresses the signal over the gain stage." The Le Bass looks cool, but I think it is an "always on" kind of pedal, where you either select channel A, channel B or both but with no option of bypassing the pedal. I'm not sure about this, but from what I gather it appears that way. Edit: nope, sorry. There is indeed a bypass mode on the Le Bass by simply tapping the footswitch of the channel that is currently engaged.

That's an interesting one! Looks like it uses the Warwick tailpiece, and the saddles look very much like those used on ABM Mueller bridges (like the monorail headless bridge I posted above). Looks nice, I like the look of a 2-piece bridge. The ones used by Mayones and Jerzy Drozd also look very appealing, and match well with the overall design of their basses.

Only thing I don't like about it is the claw that holds the ball end of the string slides freely over the finish of my bass body when I turn the tuning wheel.

I have played Elixir strings for years and love the feel and long-lasting brightness of coated strings, but try finding coated double-balls I use Status strings on both my S2's now and do like them, but they don't keep their brightness as long.