Thank you kind sir.
That really was making me scratch my head.
Looking in more detail, I believe that this was being pulled from an old mounted disk I had. Although, the /dev/sda disk was not actually mounted within the OS so not entirely sure how that happened. After realising that this must have been my /dev/sda after using another fresh download of TinyCore Core-current.iso and still getting that same FTP URI, it must have been something my side.
Again, super thanks, My project continues ... of which I hope to share as a custom ISO in the coming weeks.
JT