So I took the pickup today to the local pickup guru. I'll know tomorrow if it's a simple fix or if it needs a rewind.
Next I took the bass to my upright bass luthier. He noticed an interesting thing. The body has a "bass bar" under the top like a violin-family instrument, running the length of the body, but for some unknown reason it's under the treble side, not the bass side. The bass bar has started to delaminate and will be glued back without opening the body, it can be done with a special clamp through the f-hole - we are lucky the f holes are wide - and he will use the output jack hole to inject the glue.
He removed the neck and showed me that it was removed before. It was an amateur job... whoever did it made small nail holes in the pocket walls to "help the glue". My luthier said that carpenters do things like that. The neck was glued with plastic adhesive... but he said not to worry, he can deal with it.
Here is the pocket right after the neck was removed. the small pieces of missing veneer are from the amateur reset. Those will be fixed too.
![](http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/ll127/ilanlukatch/photo1.jpg)