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Member Comment; Don't mess with the mensur. If you don't want it Ken, I'll take it off your hands
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If only you could have held this Bass on the floor before it was taken apart. I don't know if you realize just how big it is but by most charts I have seen, it's a full 4/4 sized Bass and with some careful block area cutting we can make it a very playable Bass just like the Prescott is today that I have.
I had an offer 2 years ago for the Bass as-is and again recently from the same person who likes 'em big. This is however a 200 year old English Bass and tonally will rank easily with my Gilkes, Fendt and recently owned Dodd. The offer for this as-is with almost 10k of work into it was slightly less than half of what I was willing to let it go for. The potential value of this Bass fully restored is quite high so selling as-is will be at about 75% of it's value. If you are serious about this, PM me but in advance I will tell you that you can buy a new car for the price of this Bass as-is so check out your wheels and let me know.
To play this Bass at it's current size in the Orchestra would be punishment. It's bigger than my Prescott which is also classified as a 4/4 and it was cut about 160 years ago from even a bigger size. This English Bass however has an advantage to the player and that is weight. It is not that heavy as compared to it's size. This is due to the lighter Sycamore Back and Ribs instead of regular European Maple or in case of the Prescott, instead of its heavy Curly New England Sugar Maple.
So I can see your cause now being 'Save that Bass' from 'Cut that Bass'. I wanna save a Player and get the Bass back into permanent use in an Orchestra or at the least as planned from the start, 'My Orchestral Bass'. Selling it was never my intention when I bought this Bass. Biase took on this Job as a personal favor to me and not as a business venture.