i don't think that was particularly bad.
IIRC he has said that the homemade fretless he used on some of his earlier work was a no-name Japanese bass. The frets rattled so he pulled them.
In one of his books that I have ("Rolling With The Stones") he says that he continued to use the defretted bass on studio recordings for many years even after he switched to the Framus/Mustang/Dan Armstrong/EB-3/Steinberger live.