It may have been foolish of me to assume the bass was a 30" scale, but my knowledge of other Mosrites I've seen, or touched, was that they are typically 30" scale so I made a logical conclusion. If it had been 32" I would have been fine with that! I shouldn't have to ask every seller of a short scale Mosrite, is it a 30" scale because there are a couple, out of the thousands of basses they probably produced, that are one-offs in the 23" range.
I would take "the reasonable man" approach to this, or any other auction. People know and assume certain things based on the reasonable man argument. If I tell another bassist, or you, that I have a short scale bass for sale, what would a reasonable man assume? Just what Granny said. 30 or 32" scale. Would anyone here think 24" or thereabouts? Of course not. There are lies of commission and lies of omission. While I've learned, from this experience, never to trust a seller again without the actual scale listed in numeric terms, this case was intentionally misleading.
