Had another few minutes to work on this, the super glue trick works great. Well as long as I don't try to trim the excess off with a razor blade, that pulled 99% of the glue off, to the point that it didn't look like I filled anything. So I had to do everything twice. It's dead flat now, even though you can see the scratch (years of funk buildup stained the wood in the bottom of the scratch, nothing I tried made it any less noticable so I just filled it and moved on). Hey it's a 30 year old copy bass, I'm not looking for perfect, just better than it was. (And the weird discoloration on the top horn was there when I got it, I tried sanding it but it never got any different looking. Maybe when I get around to taking this back down to bare wood I can fix that.)
I kinda got crazy with all 5432654 scratches, dents and chunks so the back is nice and flat now. The edges need lots of help but I think I have the procedure down now so it'll go faster. I filled some of the holes on the front. There used to be 2 tug-bars on there, they are long gone but the holes are still there, under the pick guard. I have 4 different colors of wood filler so I tried them all out on the holes to find one that matched the best and filled the holes with that one.. Of course all the holes look competely noticeable now that they're dry, dangit.
The plan was to drill all 21 of the holes to re-install the hardware (5 for the bridge, and 16 for the tuners) but my girls woke up from their nap before I had time to get out the power tools. Next time, anyway... why do all my projects take so long?
Oh yeah the neck plate is really weird, it's long and narrow. Mine is all corroded and the screws are chewed up. I wanted to get a nice looking one, but it's not regular size so I may end up having to just try to get screws at the hardware store, and polish the damage out or something.