Ah, my specialist subject.
Here's the lowdown on that bass, from Rod himself.
[quote name='Rod Clements']The tone I was trying for never changed much, and the closest I got was on the old '61 Precision. It had serial no. 63325 and I bought it second-hand in London for about £80 in 1968. It would be worth thousands now. It was originally salmon pink, quite chipped & worn when I got it, and after I'd had it a few months I stripped the paint off back to the wood, as was in vogue at the time (inspired by John McVie of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers & later Fleetwood Mac) - solid guitars were not sold in natural finish then. Not long after, I saw Joe Cocker's Grease Band with Chris Stainton on bass (before he changed to piano) and was astounded to see him playing a bass much the same as mine - but with no frets! So I prised the frets out of mine with a screwdriver, filled up the slots with plastic wood and sanded and polished the fingerboard. This is definitely NOT recommended, but somehow it worked, and the fretless sound became a bit of a trademark for me. I also removed part of the scratchplate and stained the body in a dark oak colour. So that's how the bass was when I did those recordings and appeared with it on OGWT.
However, it wasn't particularly easy to play and by this time I fancied something different, so I got a Rickenbacker and had it converted to fretless. Though I used it through Jack The Lad and for a short while after, it wasn't a great success and I was soon back to a Fender - an off-the-peg fretless Precision,
In the meantime, I had left Jack The Lad and their new bass player asked if he could borrow my old '61, which I had had re-fretted. While they had it, it got stolen and I never saw it again.
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Rod is a great, great underrated player, responsible for some of the best tones there ever has been, IMO.