Longwheelbass

The 'bird is badass, will look even more so with a black guard.

Those guards are the short-lived printed tort guards that started showing up mid to late 74 and ran on through to 75, they didn't get a lot of them but they did go out on quite a few P's over those two years. If you ever get to see one up close you can see the primitive pixellation pattern they used to create them. I don't think they were that appealing so the bulk of sunburst P's in those two years ended up with black guards.

That "65" Jazz decal looks a little Letraset Here's a 66

Grossly overpriced, especially considering Leo let the work-experience kid spray that one up. That black band is as wide as the M5 outside of Bristol.

You wont get a rosewood board. Maple only.

I had this one done by the guys at Tiny Tone. Nice light mint goes perfect with the Firemist. Cheap, and quick turnaround!

You scored a 1970 with the 60's pickup spacing. That's pretty cool. As far as "air under the frets" go, they can always be clamped with thin superglue drizzled in. But you mentioned your guy recommends replacing the frets - are they too low to dress? If there's still enough height on the frets don't sweat it, get em glued down and then dressed and roll away. Don't be bummed out - though I know it's hard to take when sellers "forget" to tell you stuff about a bass they're trying to offload, you n me aren't the only ones that's happened to... And the shim - again, shims were dropped into many neck pockets to assist with setup before they went out the door, and as the years went by, and people pulled their instruments apart they often saw the shim and said "what's this?" and either binned it or forgot to put it back in. Factory shims going missing were so often the reason many half-baked "luthiers" decided to pull frets out and shave the fretboard down to "correct" a perceived bowing issue with a neck. Thus ruining a good neck for no good reason. Your bass looks great, killer combo of LPB/OT and a tort guard without the garish matching headstock. FIx the minor issues and enjoy it. Late 60's/early 70's jazz basses are just as cool sounding as the massively priced pre-CBS models, but going on your pics of the three vintage examples you already well and truly know that.

Sweet bass, real nice find. I've just seen this thread, the bass sounds awesome. You have original soldering on the pots so its almost 100% certain the pickups have never been out or fiddled with. I can tell you exactly what happened with the bridge. At some point an owner took the neck off - for whatever reason, probably to adjust the truss rod. When they put the neck back on and re-strung, they noticed the strings weren't aligning evenly down the bass and treble sides of the fretboard. Something they probably never even thought of before, let alone noticed - and then they couldn't remember if the E and G strings were always like that - so they panicked and their conclusion was..."the guy at the factory didn't mount the bridge dead centre in the middle". So they moved the bridge to what they thought was the "correct" position. Problem solved, E and G strings both the same distance from the edge of the fretboard. A global rookie mistake - I've owned more than one P Bass or Jazz with two sets of holes under the bridge. The stupid part? It's not a commonly shared set-up technique, but when attaching the neck, before fully tightening the neck mounting screws, you string up. Then you check that the E and G are equidistant from the fretboard edges. If one string is closer to the edge, all you gotta do is pull the neck by grasping it around fret one towards the side that has the bigger gap between the string and the fretboard edge. Then once you've eyeballed it and it looks good, you tighten down the neck bolts. The bridges were never mounted off-centre by mistake - they used jigs to drill all the main holes on the body and neck. Neck pockets will have a tiny amount of play - even if a neck pocket is super tight, you can still tweak it a fraction to either side to align the strings perfectly. Anyhoo, killer bass you got there, nothing like an early 70's with the B width neck. I just picked up a 73 - the thing was buzzing out everywhere, truss rod was all wrong, and the the G was almost off the edge of the fretboard. I don't know if the seller was a player or not, but this thing was unplayable. Sitting in its glorious original case. But a couple of turns on the truss rod, an alignment of the neck before tightening the bolts and a re-intonation and it is incredible. Ten minutes and no re-drilling of the bridge lol... The photo being taken from slightly above actually makes it look like I haven't aligned the strings..made me laugh after the alignment issue I described...