Thanks for the suggestions everyone, lots of basses to look into, will take a while… 
I’ve also just run into this Lakland Skyline 44-64, any opinions? (Disregard the colour…)
https://www.thomann.de/ie/lakland_skyline_44_64_gz_pj_tp.htm
And @howard hit the nail on the head, the idea here would be to not give any money to Fender. (Having said that, at the end of the day the Duff McKagan PJ is still my dream bass, so being the idiot that I am I might give it a third try, but I hope I won’t.)
See here and here. It’s currently on its way back to the retailer, they said they’ll give me a refund if they can reproduce the issue.