This 1975 vintage Fender Precision Bass is extremely interesting!

The body is in its original Dakota Red finish. There are some chips, light belt buckle rash and thumbnail marks to the body, but overall it displays relatively little play wear. The original frets show a little wear, and have not even had their first dressing yet. The back of the neck has barely worn at all. The bass was kept in a high quality flight case all its life with its previous owner (although it came to us uncased), and this no doubt accounts for the remarkable condition of the brightware - the metalwork shows none of the usual oxidisation. The Schaller tuners and bridge are chrome - rather than nickel - plated, so are as bright as the day they were made.

Schaller PBX pickups, Schaller 3-D4 roller bridge, and Schaller BMFL tuners with integral Hipshot D-tuner on the E string. As though that's not enough, it also has Schaller straplocks fitted! The really interesting aspect of all these Schaller components is that they seem to have been fitted from the day the bass was made - there are no marks or fadelines to indicate that they were fitted as aftermarket items. This intrigued me, as this was the era when Schaller started to supply Fender with many components, although the Schaller items were always Fender stamped. Was it an early "Schaller-Fender" prototype? Was it a customer-ordered special?

The Schaller PBX pickups are awesome. They have a much higher output than standard P-bass pickups, and the sound can be tailored by the toggle switch (which also seems to have been installed from new) that changes the wiring from series to parallel connection of the split P-bass pickups. The pickups also boast adjustable pole pieces, allowing the player to tailor the string-to-string balance according to their own taste and string choice.

The 3-ply white-black-white scratchplate has the very rear tip broken off (quite common with P-basses), and also is correct for the 1975 year - in 1976 Fender changed to black pickguards on Precisions.

The bass weighs in at a nice comfortable 3.9kg (8.6 pounds), making it one of the better '70s P-basses, which were often ridiculously heavy.

The bass is sold with a gig bag, allowing us to offer the bass under the $3000 threshold, so you can either supply your own case, or we can purchase one for you and ship the bass in it.

Sold to Simon