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So that's the reason for the stupidly large headstock on Fenders? Cheaper than changing the neck construction, I grant you, but it's a decision that resulted in a fugging ugly design. I am intrigued though. How do you determine if a neck design will have a dead spot, and where? Or know that putting more mass at one end will change that?

For those wanting to play Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, don't use the Trinity Grade 7 score, as it's in the wrong key (Db when the original is in Ab, furthermore there is no pedal and most of the opening chords are wrong, "Europeanised and simplified", and I stopped there...), but buy the official score here instead: https://score-en.sitesakamoto.com/products/merry_christmas_mr_lawrence_piano_solo

Cool thread. I'd add one more ingredient to this. 'Ghost notes'. Ghost notes are like ligaments, they bind rythmns together.

My bad, I need to reformulate my post correctly.

Yep, that’s the factory one. Specifically one of the earlier ones without the Fender logo.

This one?

It was my second gig of the double header weekend last night. A dep spot with a band I've played with before. Great bunch, very relaxed and very welcoming of the 'new guy' when I first played with them. Last night they also had a dep singer so I wasn't the newbie anymore. It was a golf club Christmas dinner, so quite formal and posh but we were looked after by the club - a tab behind the bar (being gig teetotal, I was gutted but ultimately it's the thought that counts). I decided to use my ungigged Ibanez SR300 and my ungigged Valeton GP5 into the FX return on my well gigged Peavey Minimax 600 and the pair of TE 1x10 cabs. Also present - Sine effect H24 HPF and Joyo wireless transmitter/receiver. At the last minute I was offered a lift by the guitarist and had to leave my spare bass (Ibanez EHB1000s) behind as it wouldn't fit into his car with all the other kit. I expect you can see where this is leading. In my defence, your honour, although half the kit was ungigged, I'd been practicing with it at home a for about two weeks so it was all tested. The singer turned up late and although he seemed a decent chap, he had been expressing concerns about half the setlist ('I haven't sung that one', 'I don't know the words to that one' etc) to the band in the days leading up to the gig. So in the soundcheck before he arrived, I had a go at singing 'Sultans of Swing', only the second time I'd sung it in front of a band. I remembered 80% of the words and was about 80% in tune that was deemed good enough in the cirumstances.😂 Three songs into the set, with the audience up and dancing, I started to notice that the volume from the amp was fading slowly up and down from the full gig volume to about half over about 10 seconds. My first thought was that I'd hit an unexpected patch on the GP5 ('Slow, Annoying Trem' or similar) but the GP5 was set on the Ampeg patch I'd set up for the night. Then I started to smell something burning. The Minimax is on it's way out, I thought. No problem, I can DI. But someone in the audience had knocked over a candle and it had smouldered on one of the napkins for a bit. Meanwhile the slow tremolo was now speeding up a bit and my bass was spending more time quiet than at gig volume. I reasoned that the battery on the bass was going and as I was due to start 'Keep On Running' with the bass riff, I called a time out. While the rest of the band played a longer intro with the guitarist covering the riff, I changed the battery. I managed to get through the song but the problem was still there. I didn't have any time to do a 'one thing at a time' test of the signal chain so between songs, I got rid of everything between bass and amp, plugged into the amp's 'proper' input with a cable and to my great relief, finished the set without any problems from my side. There were a few dodgy moments with the singer not knowing/forgetting/making up lyrics but nothing that couldn't be dealt with. 'Sultans' went well (by now I'd remembered 95% of the lyrics and scored 90% on the 'in-tune-o-meter') and got a good response from the audience. I even got a bonus on top of my fee from the band - presumably for stepping up to sing, or perhaps entertaining them with the harried, rabbit-in-the-headlights look I had as I tried to sort my problems out. This morning will be taken up with identifying the culprit, taking it into the garden, beating it with a baseball bat and burying it. My suspicion is that the Valeton was playing up, as apart from it and the Ibanez all the other components of the chain have been played 'live'. I was using the wireless transmitters at the previous night's gig with no problems. Another option is that there is some strange interaction between the Valeton and the H24 or the H24 and the FX in on the Minimax. Although the bass wasn't the issue, as the problem developed it would have been reassuring to have the spare just in case. As an advocate of bringing a spare to gigs, I hang my head in shame at the lapse. Ironically, the SR300 was purchased with a view to it being a light weight spare itself. You will be relieved to hear that my footwear of choice - black Skechers - performed admirably throughout the night. Found 'Not Guilty'.

Again, might be misunderstanding but the hi-mass is the stock bridge on these.

I guess you mean it must have the "regular" high mass one, but it was also an add-on.

The colour looks like a faded Daphne Blue, which is my favourite Fender/Dupont colour. 😍 That said, the dead spot is not inherent to the 34 inches scale, but to the bass, and here more precisely the neck construction, which is why Leo Fender enlarged the headstock on the new 1957 Precision Bass, but it didn't totally work, even if it was a huge improvement. The dead spot is the frequency resonance of the whole assembly, and even a Steinway grand piano has one around the A6, cleverly moved a very few comas higher or lower depending on the master crafter, but you can still hear it...

I may have misread this post, but the bridge in the photo isn’t the factory bridge for these.

I had the same problem in quite a few venues with BF cabs (2 X TWO10) all as recently as this year. I can empathise too as there were people who just didn't get it, told me to turn up, asked me if I was deaf, or just ridiculed the situation and didn't take it seriously. I don't get the problem at all since moving to an LFSys Monaco. I can hear myself, the band can hear me and it'll go as loud as I'll never need. There's no unmiked drum kit that will be louder than my rig now, and if the kit has mics then my amp will be DI'd along with it.

Personally, I'd leave the 'Claw Bridge' on. It looks very individual and cool. Definitely a talking point.

As @SurroundedByManatees mentioned, the bridge was not factory fitted, but is an add-on, I remember owning a set of original Fender brass knobs still in their packaging that I gave to a friend needing them and they were so heavy!?! You now have to search for the original bridge which is the one not fitted (so the packed one) on this fully original 1982 (aka Dan Smith era) Fender Precision Bass Special and you can also try to find the original ashtrays while you're at it.. If you look at the image above, you'll understand that the two outer holes on your bridge were meant to align with the bridge cover holes. 😉 Just in case you want to read the Fender ad provided, again, by @SurroundedByManatees, here it is: My main question is: How much does the whole bass weigh as, with all that brass, it must quite heavy? I guess around 5 kilos or even more...