Idea for frettless fingerboard

[Mark]

I had an idea today and wondered if there was any merit to it. I plan on making a fretless bass with lines filled with a wood or a wood/adhesive mixture. Assuming the board was glued to the neck and the lines were cut, what if I clamped the neck down at both ends with a piece of wood in the center of the neck, thus bowing the neck slightly. Then I would fill in the slots.

Will this add any rigidity to the neck when strung up? Has it ever been tried before?

[LGM Guitars]

if it's a neck from scratch, why cut the slots deep at all? just enough to inlay a strip for positioning.

It won't add any rigidity at all though, you're only putting a solid material (glue) across the board, it won't do anything more than a fret in that piece would. The bottom line is, you cut the line, you comprimise the board strength and rigidity anyway, the most solid board you will ever have, is the one you don't cut, but those tiny slots, in something as thin as a fretboard, would have very little effect when filled with anything. The only thing you risk by bowing it backwards is overfilling the slots and creating unwanted pressure on the fretboard itself under string tension.

You have to remember, a fret slot is generally .024" at rest, under string tension, over the lenght of a 24 fret neck, they probably only compress from front bow to .0235" or .023 if that even.

So, the simple answer is, I really doubt anything at all would be gained.

[Scott Rosenberger]

If you're using a slotted fretboard, glue in some veneer I've done it before and it looks really good. It however doesn't really put any pressure on the neck