I'm getting bored with the explorer, so I have started a side-project. I bought a bass 2 years ago to get the parts I needed for my first homebuilt instrument. Well, I saved the neck and body so I could use it for a project later on. Now the time has come to use those parts, and as the title says, it will be a fretless 4-stringer. The neck was fretted until an hour or so, when I pulled out the last fret from the neck, and it turned out pretty decent. I have NEVER done any fretjobs of any kind before, so needless to say, I was a bit nervous.
I have seen a lot of guys who just don't care about tutorials, and instead they make a new topic about an old subject. I didn't want do be that guy, so I sat down and read tutorials on the main page, I searched the forum, and the internet after defretting tutorials. I did have some knowledge about defretting before, but I wanted to pick up tips about it, and have a plan in my head before I started so I wouldn't mess the neck up. I went and bought a pair of end-nippers, and cranked up the soldering iron. I also taped parallell to the frets, about 1-1.5mm from the fret itself. A tutorial said that this was a good idea, and it was indeed! I didn't get many chips at all, since I worked veeeery slowly, but I did get 3 chips that needed glueing. Well okay...2 needed, and the third was small, but in the perfect position to get a drop of glue under it, so I glued that one too
Tomorrow I might scrape the slots, remove the nut, and maybe fill the slots. It will be a lined fretless, since I have some birch in very thin "veneers" (not really. just thin pieces of wood). I also thought that I would bring in my girlfriend to do the finish on it, since she's an artist, and I thought it would be fun for us both! The paint scheme is going to be kept a secret until it's finished, and I have a design in mind that I've never seen a bass have, so it'll be pretty unique
The specs isn't relly though out yet, since I haven't bought the parts yet, but somewhere along these lines:
Eastone neck, maple with rosewood fingerboard, 34"
Eastone body, plywood
Some cheap-ass J-pickups
Vintage-style bridge
Open back vintage-style tuners
A set of nice roundwound strings
Chrome hardware
As I said, parts aren't really planned out more than that. Also this bass won't be played much, it'll mostly be art on the wall This is why I'll only use economy parts.
Now to the pics:
Before defretting:
Partially defretted:
http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk281/Bygde/P1010668.jpg
Defretting completed:
http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk281/Bygde/P1010675.jpg
If nothing I have just said made sense, it's 03:40 AM here, and I was out with a couple of friends to 8:30 AM this morning, so I am VERY tired!