Well, Graeme, it seems like it still has a mahogany body core...
Seriously, though, in that timeframe, the price list was a bit screwed up and you could add features to an Essence until it turned into a Signature or even Series I bass in everything but name and save a few hundred dollars. Bass Central ordered an awful lot of Essence basses that looked like SC Signature models, though usually with Europa electronics.
Technically, this one probably would have been better off with a C serial number for Custom.