Fender Lead bass : unleaded?

In 1979, when Fender was preparing a affordable and cheap series of guitars, they had foreseen to release a bass as well : the Fender Lead Bass





Between a Musicmaster and a Jazz Bass, the Lead Bass never made it to mass production. 

So what can we tell about it since it never made it to us and remained a prototype?  The body is small, it reminds us of the Mustang/Musicmaster guitar bodies converted to bass to allow costeffectivity. Only one volume knob and one tone control for two jazz-pickups. The pickup selection is allowed by two toggle switches (as on the Fender Lead guitar below), probably to select individually the neck and bridge pickups and both at the same time. Maybe both pickups could be activated as a humbucker pickup as on Danelectro. 

The neck could be a Jazz or Precision. Fender says on its Archive website that it was a long scale one (unlike the Mustang and Musicmaster basses). I wouldn't be surprised to see somedays a recreation of this model, after all, the never released Marauder had its moment in the Modern Player series. Everything can happen!


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