I finally caved and bought one of these beasts. I spotted one in cream and had to try it.
I sold my Rivoli and 4003 last month, but regretted selling the Rivoli almost instantly. I bought the Rivoli as a conciliatory prize of sorts after a personal setback, but over time began to begrudge it slightly as it wasn't letting me move on mentally.. Psychobabble aside, the pickup mounting situation (teetering on the outer limits of repurposed neck bolts) always annoyed me as well. The Rivoli also had a nasty fall. I was able to cosmetically repair it, but it almost seemed like a sign: sell this bass!
The Tele bass sounds good. Almost too good for the premise of it. Burying a hot pickup at the end of the neck tends to limit tonal options. The Fender scale length and maple neck seem to provide some sort of sonic guardrails from it being too much of a hot, foggy-sounding bass. There is an inherent freight train grind to it and the tone control perfectly pivots the tone from freight train to subsonic rumble. I've got back what I lost with the Rivoli, but with a more confident fundamental note below the 5th fret of the E string. Yes, it weighs a bit and has no contours, but I can get passed that! I will finish off the fretwork that Fender started and call it a day. Good bass, and arguably better than the originals? If you study photos of mid-'70s Tele basses you see that the neck pockets could be a bit approximately routed, for example.
Interesting that Fender made a more Gibson-style bass at the same time that Gibson started experimenting with longer scale lengths, maple necks and moving pickups away from the extremes. A bit of cross-pollination.
