There is another Slab of Johns in England (unless it is this one?) as I know the owner. That would make it four.
The funny thing about Frankenstein is that John reckoned the pickup and circuitry gave it the raunchy tone, whereas I think it was the maple-capped neck if anything. The Slabs had a bone-stock P bass wiring harness and pickup. No subtle overwinding on the pickups or 500 K potentiometers or anything like that. John K on Talkbass studied the circuitry on one and it was identical to any other '60s P bass. I saw gut shots of another and one pickup bobbin had grey flatwork and the other black. These were pulled out the bins like any other P bass.
Quite interesting that John was driven to build Frankenstein per one set of beliefs, got the right results, but might have been totally wrong about the reasons behind these results.
I'm guessing the sunburst body and white pickguard came from two different instruments. The chrome pickup cover came from a Jazz bass and the neck, pickup and wiring harness came out of a Slab bass. John even stuck a tug bar on there, even though he never used them. John had the bass refinished in the '70s, so maybe the Slab got done at the same time? It makes sense that if he really loved these instruments you wanted to keep them looking fresh, rather than let the paint wear away. John was a sharp dresser and I imagine he wanted his gear to look the same.
And... Calling it 'Frankenstein' was wrong. In the original book Frankenstein is the doctor, so 'Frankenstein's Monster' or simply 'Monster' might have been better.
