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If it was an earlier neck that would make the heel stamp wrong and the headstock logo wrong

My first band was mostly a recording band. We had two reed organs with different tones and different preset chords, but unfortunately were out of tune enough with each other to not be usable at the same time. We'd tune to whichever one we were using for each song. For my second band which played live we would all (bass, guitar and other synth) tune to our Wasp synth. This then had to be set up for the first song which had an opening filter pulse which was triggered from a drum machine, but the opening time of the filter was set using the repeat function on the envelope generators. Although I had a patch chart showing the positions of the knobs this had to be fine-tuned to the speed of the drum machine which as set by another rotary control. I could take us up to 5 minutes to tune up and the set up the synths and drum machine for the opening song all of which had to be done with the band on stage in front of the audience. In 1983 my next band with was all synths used a test tone at the start of our backing tape for tuning, which again had to be done on stage in front of the audience immediately before we played. After 3 gigs like this I went out and bought a Boss TU12 tuner and have never had to inflict the tuning song on my audience since. Having said that electronic tuners are not without their foibles. At a Terrortones gig our guitarist had managed to set her tuner to something other than A=440. The sound was terrible on stage so the only person who noticed that something was wrong was our drummer who was sandwiched between the guitar and bass amps. He kept telling me us to tune up which we diligently did, each perfectly in tune with ourselves and completely out of tune with the other. It was only at the next practice where we could hear everything properly that we realised what had happened.

You never finish being a bass player so you’re good to go there 👍

It's interesting to compare how 'easy' (I use the term loosely) it is to get started o various instruments... Certain types of instrument are inherently more difficult to make progress on. There's a reason why the recorder is used as a beginner instrument as it's easy to blow and the fingering is simple. The only down side is that for the small hands of children it means using the descant recorder, which is very high pitched. The treble recorder is much nicer to listen to. Here's a consort of recorders from treble to the sub-contrabass... Main challenge with 'standard' recorders is that you need to learn two sets of fingerings for F and C instruments, as unlike say saxes, they don't transpose so you have to use different fingering on the different pitches (i.e. descant and tenor are same fingering, treble and bass are same fingering). Single reed woodwind instruments are relatively easy to get going on. This is the clarinet and saxophone families. Saxes are easier than clarinets. The embouchure is not too difficult and fingering over the core two octaves is mostly straightforward. Clarinets are trickier. I play saxophone and in my first lesson, I was getting basic notes out of it back in 2011. The core couple of octaves of D below treble staff to the D two octaves above are relatively easy to learn. It takes longer to be able to do the lowest notes (down to Bb) and the highest standard notes up to top F#. Double reed instruments are MUCH harder to get on with. The main ones being the oboe and bassoon families. not only are these instruments difficult to play/learn they are also inherently much more expensive. String instruments of the violin family are relatively easy to get basic sounds out of but present challenges of coordinating fingering with left hand and bowing with right. Cello is easier as you don't have to seal with holding the instrument up like violin or viola. Getting to a reasonable standard is more challenging. And that brings us to brass.... I have only recently tried to play a brass instrument and it presents a lot of challenges. You have to maintain an embouchure, similar to sax, but you have to 'buzz' your lips as well. For a given combination of valves, there is a harmonic series of notes that will come out. You have to adjust your oral cavity - mostly by raising/lowering the tongue - to be able to get different notes from teh harmonic series. For example, the base open note with no valves is a 'C', the next harmonic is the 5th at G, then the octave at the C above, and so on. to play a specific note, you have to think about 'pitching' it since even at my basic level, 'open' (no valves) can produce one of 3 notes depending on how I pitch it. The number of choices will increase as I improve. Using valve 2 will give me the B below middle C, F#, then the B an octave up. I've been playing since the end of last September, initially with weekly group less with the band, I now have a weekly private lesson. I can just about play from B below middle C to the C an octave above, so a 9th. Apparently, that's about what you expect for someone that's been learning for a year. Admittedly I have some advantages in that I already read music so do not have to add that into the mix.

Most likely @Mrbigstuff got it right with a 4 bolt neck refinished. worth checking the underside of the neck to see if there was ever a 3 bolt fixing (I’m guessing not!)

I agree - lots of inconsistencies and to be honest I can't really say how accurate the description of it was, but to be fair it was fully disclosed as a parts bass and I bought it for the sound rather than any idea of value/collectability.. The only things dating the body to 1972 would be the neckplate (1972) and the pots (1970). Early '70s bodies do tend to be a lot lighter than late '70s, especially as most of them were still alder at this point, but ash bodied basses around 5kg were a thing even back then. There's also the possibility that it's a maple body - Fender did experiment with maple that was even heavier with ash in the early 70s - Steve Harris' original P bass is an example of this. There's not much bare wood visible so it's hard to tell, but the neck pocket is fairly intact and unpainted with no sign of it ever having been a three bolt, so I don't think it can be earlier than 1974/75. I'm also pretty sure it's not an aftermarket body. The pickup routing and neck pocket show the usual (poor) quality of CBS Fender, and the '70s pickup spacing is hard enough to find on aftermarket bodies even now.

I can’t quite work out what’s happening with the neck, a S7 should have a bullet truss rod and 3 bolt neckplate , but the stamp reads 1977 4-Thursday, and to me the logo looks genuine , strange

The truss rod exists to provide force acting against the force applied by the pull of the strings. As there would be no string tension, I would slacken the truss rod off to prevent it forming a permanent back bow, wrap it in bubble wrap and store it a room temperature — ie not in the loft or shed. When I bought a Fender replacement P to J conversion neck, it came with the truss tod slackened off, so I slackened off the rod on the fretless it was replacing before packing that one away.

You'll be needing to learn to play with pick and fingers.

There’s no way the neck ever had a bullet truss did in it. That’s a factory made neck.

It's the same with Elvis and Beatles memorabilia. It's only valuable to those who have memorability.

Which was my point about being valuable to Gen Xers for maybe the next 10 years and then lose value.

I agree. The better preamps are not as important in live settings, for the most part (in my opinion), while the additional functionality of the X32 rack over the XR18 seems like a more useful thing to have.