My new (sort of) fretless

bassjones · Post by **bassjones** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 10:08 am

I pulled the frets out of the Yamaha 5-string Monday and laid the maple veneer in place and got it sanded down to level Monday as well. Not the smoothest fret pull in the world, but not the worst I've ever seen either. Last night I got two coats of polyurethane on, and did one more this morning before I left for work. I'll do two more coats tonight and hopefully that will be it. I'm going to put the old strings back on it first, just to check it out, then I'll put some nice new strings on it and we'll be good to go. I really hope it's ready by Saturday because the tune NoRA is laying down needs to have a fretless bass part on it.

therecordinghouse · Post by **therecordinghouse** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 10:56 am

mmmmm, fretless bass......

fragile_funk · Post by **fragile_funk** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:05 am

Cool! I defretted a bass once. It was a piece of junk to start with and I did a pretty horrible job, but it was a fun project.

Grindspine · Post by **Grindspine** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:39 am

You polyurethaned the fretboard? I thought that fretless basses usually had the string against unfinished wood. Why the coating?

bassjones · Post by **bassjones** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 12:01 pm

Normally, you don't finish an ebony board, but most people (very notably, Jaco) put a finish on rosewood. It allows for the use of roundwound strings without killing the board. Also, with the crappy defret it smooths out the fingerboard.

bassjones · Post by **bassjones** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 1:21 pm

almost done. put the strings on last night and was getting some major buzzing in the lower 7 frets. a minor tweak of the truss rod tonight should take care of it. I think I'm going to need to put a new nut on it too, but that can wait a little bit.