Cerb

The scarf joint turned out perfect. I'm very pleased with the results, being as it is my first and I was quite worried about it. Here it is after cleaning it up: I finished all of the work on the fingerboard as well. Here is is after radiusing to 10" and cutting an access hole for truss rod adjustment: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v375/Cer...Progress/21.jpg

You wont get any extremely nice pickups for $75 bucks. I'm about to drop a couple hundred on some Nordstand pups. Unless you find some on ebay, about the best you will do is $60 per.

I got a few small things finished today. Just click the thumbnails for a larger image. Fingerboard tapered 15* angle and holes for nut elements of end of fingerboard 15* angle in neck wood Headstock lams glued and clamped Headstock lams dry with 15* angle Positions marked on fingerboard Holes drilled to accept fiber optic cable End of fingerboard shaped Channel routed on the back of the fingerboard for cable Tomorrow I will probably route the channels for the CF and TR rods and glue up the scarf joint. With any luck, by the end of the week I will have the ebony backplate on the headstock, have the neck tapered and have the headstock shaped.

I used crushed azurite from Arizona Silhouette, one of the sites mentioned above, for fretlines on my first bass (search "Concordis" to see how it looks). I'm using turquoise for the one I'm building at the moment (search "syzygy").

If it's good enough for Benavente, it's good enough for anybody.

Very pretty, dude. I'd hit it (if it was fretless [and maybe if not] )

Plus, even without them, I doubt the bass would go out of tune if you had decent tuners. My basses stay tuned within 2 or 3 cents for weeks without retuning.

Never do they come out the back of the headstock, though, as he mentioned.

Walmouth is another name for Warmoth if you are wondering

The only problem I would see would be the holding of the frets well. The string wear is not an issue, because the strings will almost never touch it anyways unless you have a grip from hell.

It's not as easy to get away with it if you are playing in a band situation. If you are off a bit it WILL sound dissonant. Playing by yourself isn't really an issue. It won't, however, sound as dissonant on bass for the same ammount of error because of the scale length. Who said music is supposed to be easy, though? What ever happened to creating challenges for yourself?

I would have to disagree. Playing fretless opens up so many more possibilities for creativeness, technique, etc. One can do amazing things on fretless that you couldn't dream about doing with fretted. Needless to say, anyone who says it is a bad idea is plain ignorant.

Fretless guitars, just as fretless basses add even more creative possibilities. It's hardly a gimmick if you actually wish to take your playing to the next level.

String trees are definately not needed with straight headstocks as long as you have a slight step. On my current bass, however, I'm using a 15 degree headstock.

They are mainly that large because I'm going for the hollowbody feel, and the body center in wenge, so I need to reduce as much weight as possible. Plus, I hate working in cramped up control cavities. I figure that since the plates will be continuous, it won't really detract from the look. If I wasn't making continuous plates, the cavities would be much smaller.