The Last Bass Outpost

Product video on the Ampeg Youtube channel:

I posted the question on another forum and got an answer. There is book about these basses: 'Fender Bass For Britain -The History of the 1966 Slab-Bodied Precision Bass' written by Barry Matthews.

A tech suggested John's recently-bought slab bass have an extra jack socket and volume control fitted so John could dispense with his split lead and have control over his two Sound City stacks from his bass. He agreed - and, 'it sounded awful'. John asked him to put it back how it was. He couldn't and John bought his second slab soon after, which he then smashed at a gig at The Cow Palace in San Francisco. The neck from this bass was later used to make Frankenstein.

The thingy that I mistook for a switch is actually the second jack socket.

I hope your friend can give the definitive answer about that knob. I went Googling and found two possibilities: one of them is that the bass was rewired for stereo output and the other is that Peter Cook had added a phase switch and a bass boost from a Gibson EB2 or Epiphone Rivoli. When you look at the picture below there could be a toggle switch between the tug bar and the first knob. A bass boost seems a little bit unlikely to me though because he was trying to get a more trebly sound around that time, using roundwound strings.

Cool idea but the bass on Live at Leeds was not a slab Precision, it was a bass that he called Frankenstein. According to his notes in Bass Culture, the book about his collection, that bass was put together from the parts of five smashed basses. The neck, pickups and electronics came from a slab bass, the bridge from a Jazz bass and the rest of the parts came from other Precisions.
I would still love to own a reissue slab bass if they make one because of the almost mythical status that the originals have.

No, Mexico. There are pictures of the back of the headstock on the Sweetwater site and you can see the MX prefix of the serial number there.

Nice colour but the paint looks very thin, you can see the pores in the wood and the backs of the guitars look almost "roadworn". Is Pelham Blue supposed to be sprayed so lightly or do you also think they could use another layer of paint?

I already saw them on the first page of this thread but a bit more of Holland's finest from the seventies won't hurt. Interesting Jazz bass in this clip with a humbucker near the neck.

I use MP3tag, it is freeware and I think it does everything you need: http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html