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I started this build thread on the original AGF, and it didn't get too far before everything went sideways. I'm eventually going to repost all of my build threads over here, but I figured I'd start with this one, because it's short. It takes some doing extracting the text from the PDFs of the threads I saved, and I have to undo the formatting when I paste it in here, so it takes a bit of time.

Originally published 5/26/20 on the original AGF:

For some reason, I rarely post bass build threads here. I suppose I was under the impression that not too many people here were interested in bass, but if people are interested in reading about me hacking a Commodore 64, I don't know why nobody would be interested in a bass guitar (it is a guitar too, after all ).

I've been wanting a fretless bass for almost as long as I've been playing bass, but I could never justify spending a lot of money for an instrument that I‘ll probably only use occasionally, and I‘ve never cared for the "Ebonol" fingerboard on the Squier fretless Jazz, or the sound that it made. I suppose I could have bought some other import fretless bass, but because of J aco, ifI was going to have a fretless bass, it @ to be a Jazz Bass. Besides, other cheap fretless basses often used Ebonol as well, (or something similar) or the fingerboard didn't have fret-markers (I NEED them fret markers!) I bought all the parts for this build about 5 years ago (including a fretted Jazz Bass neck), but since my last (first) attempt to de-fret a bass neck ended in less han spectacular results, I was a little gun-shy, and these parts stayed in my closet until just recently. I finally got up the gumption to de-fret this neck last night, and it came out MUCH better this time around. I did almost everything wrong the last time, which resulted in a lot of wood chips being pulled up along the edges of the fret slots by the barbs on the fret tangs. Whatever chips were lifted this time were very small and shallow, and were rendered invisible by the time I was done. I think this is as clean a fret-removal as you can expect:
All frets exiled!
In case you're interested, I removed the frets by heating them first with a soldering iron to melt the glue, then I used a pair of fret pullers to pull up one end of the fret and crimped along the length of the fret until it was free. If it feels like you have to apply a bit of muscle to pull the fret up, you haven‘t heated it enough, and will have to re-apply the soldering iron to the fret for a few seconds. The frets should come out somewhat effortlessly. Let the crimping action do the work. The last time I did this, once I got one end of the fret lifted, I pulled the whole thing out in one motion, like a lever. That will get you very chippy results. Remember that rosewood is a hard, and somewhat brittle wood (yeah, even harder than maple).

Then I used some maple binding strips that I got from Luthier‘s Mercantile to fill the fret slots. You may have noticed from the previous photos that the fret slots did not run the entire width of the fretboard, so I had to knock that bit of wood out of each end of every slot so the maple strips could slot right in there. Then I ran bead of Krazy Glue clown each side of the maple shims to secure them in place.
Then I trimmed off most of the excess wood with the fret pullers. The last time, I used a razor saw to trim the inserts, and it was way more time consuming and left a lot of scratches in the surface of the fretboard.
Then I sanded evelything flush to the surface:


Ok, it seems like I can't add more than 5 pics, so this will be continued in the next post...

And here it is all finished and oiled... I'm pretty jacked about the way it came out! Very neat and clean... I‘m planning to spray it with a few coats of poly to protect it from string wear, but I‘m almost tempted to keep it the way it is.
It’s hard to tell from the photos, but the pearloid fret markers really pop! Almost looks like real MOP. I‘ve had this neck for so long, I don‘t really remember where I got it, or what it is. I think it‘s from a Squier, but I don‘t think I‘ve ever seen a Squier neck with inlays like this. I could be wrong though... I usually prefer SX basses over Squiers, so I haven't really paid that much attention to them.
Here's the body I‘m going to use. I think I bought this from Guitar Huggers. I'm pretty sure it's from a Squier fretless Jazz Bass (no pickguard screw holes is what gives it away)

That fretboard is beautiful. And great job overall!

That fretboard is beautiful. And great job overall!

Before I set about finishing the fingerboard, I decided to give the edges a proper roll (i.e.; not done with the shaft of a screwdriver ):
Jaco said that he pulled the frets out of the "Bass of Doom" with a butter knife, filled the slots with wood putty, then finished the fingerboard with marine epoxy (right after skinning an alligator and wrestling a grizzly bear). Other people (including Jaco himself) say that the bass was already in a fretless state when he bought it.

While fret removal with cutlery and replacing frets with wood putty are bad ideas in my book, I liked the idea of using epoxy for the fingerboard, so I bought a can of this stuff about 5 years ago:
Since then, I've read that this stuff is a nightmare to work with. You have to use bastard files and fre paper to shape it, and it just seemed that finishing it in polyurethane would be easier. I imagine that's what Fender does on their fretless basses... If they finish the fretboard at all.

I started with spar urethane because I thought it would be a more durable finish, since it's intended for boats and outdoor use, and I also had nearly a full can of it left over and I wanted to get rid of it. The trouble with spar is; it gets really yellow with several coats, and it started to affect the look of the inlays, so I switched over to a regular polyurethane. All I could get was semi-gloss (getting oil-based polyurethane in California is like smuggling in contraband), but it'll buff up to a nice gloss just the same.

I have to wait a week before I can radius sand it and buff it out.
I also sprayed the back of the neck and the headstock:
I've got a custom decal on the way that's a replica of the Fender "transitional" logo that they used on the the '62-'64 Jazz Basses, but where it should say "Electric Bass" it says "Jaco Tribute".

fullonshred wrote: ↑Sun Jun 14, 2020 10:06 pm That fretboard is beautiful. And great job overall!

Thanks!

fullonshred wrote: ↑Sun Jun 14, 2020 10:07 pm That fretboard is beautiful. And great job overall!

Thanks again!

Looking great so far! Hoping to see it finished.

A little Jaco funk to get us in the mood for some fretless mojo...

Only Jaco could bring Sam and Dave back together. And this was just his first album!

sabasgr68 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 14, 2020 10:56 pm Looking great so far! Hoping to see it finished.

Thanks, Sabas... It won't be too much longer. I'm expecting the decals tomorrow, or Tuesday, so I can then finish the front of the headstock, and radius and buff the fingerboard. The back of the neck and headstock are going to have a satin finish, which just entails scuffing up the poly with Scotchbrite. Then it'll just be a matter of assembly and soldering. I reckon it should be done in a couple of weeks.

I was looking at the body yesterday, thinking the finish looked pretty good, but then I caught a reflection of light from a nearby lamp, and discovered there were tons of swirl marks in the finish:
All over the body...
I kept this body wrapped in bubble wrap in the box that it shipped in for the last 5 years, so this thing probably got shuffled around a bit before it got to me... No matter... just a few minutes with Meguiar's Scratch-X and some elbow grease sorted that out:

Got the decals today!
Now I can continue finishing the headstock.

Killer bass project! Looks awesome

[media] [/media]

Manco53 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 9:56 pm Killer bass project! Looks awesome

Thanks, man... And thanks for posting that video. I hadn't seen that one yet.

Decaled!! (say it like a Canadian )

A couple more items for the fretless came in today... I thought I'd be able to build this bass out completely with parts I have on hand, but after taking a look at the control plates I have, they looked kinda shabby, and a bit scratched up from shuffling around in drawers, and they had small holes for import pots that would need to be reamed out to accommodate CTS pots. I like the guitars I build to look new when they're finished, and I hate reaming out holes in metal, so I ordered a "genuine" Fender control plate.
About the screws... I have a bunch of Jazz Bass pickups lying around, but all the screws for them seem to have evaporated. I ponied up the extra coin for the Fender screws (just as I did for the Jazzmaster pickups in the Eclipse), because I know they're made in the US out of tempered steel, and I feel like I have to make a PSA for my guitar modding and building brethren:

DO NOT BUY CHINESE SCREWS!!!

They'll ruin your project and break your heart! They're way too soft! The slots in the head get stripped out too easily and I've had three instances now where the head of the screw just popped right off with half of the shaft embedded in the wood. Any attempts to remove the rest of the screw results in the metal crumbling away like dried clay, until you're left with nothing to grab onto. That happened when I was removing a tuner screw from the back of the 12-string Tele headstock.
All you can do then is gouge the damn thing out. I did manage to fill the gash with bits of toothpick and wood glue, and sanded it flush, but it left a nasty scar, and I had to glue a veneer over the back of the headstock to cover it.
About the only Chinese screws I'll buy now are pickguard screws... I don't trust them for anything else.

Trying to decide which pickups I want to put in this. The pickups I was planning on using are a set of Fender "Original" Jazz Bass pickups. I bought them because they're supposed to sound like '62 Jazz Bass pickups, which was the year that the "Bass of Doom" was made, but almost every review I've read says that they don't sound so great, and not at all like a '62 Jazz Bass, so now I'm not so sure.

I have another set of mystery pickups that I've had for about 12 years. I bought a used set of Fender Pure Vintage '74 pickups from somebody on ebay, and he sent me these instead:
As soon as I saw them, I knew they weren't legit. The wire colors were wrong, the magnets looked wrong (I later learned they have ceramic magnets and those are just steel slugs), and I'd never seen a set of Fender Jazz Bass pickups that had that steel shielding plate on the back like that... Or any other brand, for that matter... I've seen copper plates with some Fender bass pickups, but they don't cover the entire back of the pickup, nor do they have a hole in them for the wires. When I contacted the seller, he said he must have shipped me those by mistake. I don't know if he was trying to scam me or not, but he sent me the Fender pickups and told me I could keep the imports.

While I was waiting for the Fenders to arrive, I installed the imports in my bass just to see what they sounded like, and I fully expected them to sound like garbage, but they sounded pretty damn good! The Fenders sounded better (in fact, the '74s are my favorite Jazz Bass pickups in the world so far), but I thought the ceramic pickups were worth hanging on to.

I hope they sound good for a fretless bass, because I'm getting kinda tired of hanging on to them.

Awesome project and lots of good info here. I was jonesing for a fretless bass and I got weak and bought a super el-cheapo Rogue fretless that has no fret markers. I love it, but I'm lost on the fretboard. The side markers seem to be in the wrong place as well. I got a tuner and marked new side dots with a sharpie - meh. So I bought a Glarry P-Bass for about $60.00 off E-Bay that I bought planning to de-fret. The dang thing is, I really liked the Glarry! I'll eventually give it a shot, though, and this post is a great resource.

manodano wrote: ↑Mon Jun 22, 2020 11:18 pm Awesome project and lots of good info here. I was jonesing for a fretless bass and I got weak and bought a super el-cheapo Rogue fretless that has no fret markers. I love it, but I'm lost on the fretboard. The side markers seem to be in the wrong place as well. I got a tuner and marked new side dots with a sharpie - meh. So I bought a Glarry P-Bass for about $60.00 off E-Bay that I bought planning to de-fret. The dang thing is, I really liked the Glarry! I'll eventually give it a shot, though, and this post is a great resource.

Thanks Dan!

You're a braver man than I am... I don't think I could play a fretless bass without fret markers. I don't even think the side markers would help me much.

I've been thinking about making a video, demonstrating the fret-pulling process. I found it impossible to take pictures while I was doing it. I have a junk bass neck around here that I could use.

Well I was hoping to have this bass all finished last weekend, but I ran into a snag. The bass is pretty much completed, all I needed to do was install the pickups and string it up, but I couldn't find the neck pickup I was going to use. I was originally going to install that pair of import ceramic pickups, but I already know what they sound like. I've never heard the Fender "Originals", and thought I should at least hear what they sound like, instead of listening to other people's opinions of them. Also, they're more appropriate to put in a Jaco Tribute than a pair of cheap Chinese jobs.

But I'm afraid that pickup is LOST lost. I looked everywhere multiple times... as if maybe this time, it'll be there (even though it wasn't the last four times I looked). Have you ever hopelessly lost your keys and you're so desperate to find them that you're looking in the freezer, or the kitchen cupboards, or under the bathroom sink? Well, I didn't go that far, but I did catch myself starting to look in places where a Jazz Bass pickup was highly unlikely to be... Just because I had already looked everywhere else.

I finally resigned myself to the fact that it's probably gone (I think it probably fell off the edge of my desk and into the trash bin), and I started looking on ebay for a replacement. I came across a new Fender Custom Shop '60s neck pickup for GFS money and snatched it up. I was hoping to have it this weekend, but since the seller took three days to hand it over to USPS, I'll probably have it next Tuesday or Wednesday.

And I'll bet two days after I get the pickup, the original one will turn up in some unlikely place... You know what they say: The best way to find a lost item is to purchase a replacement.

Here's some progress pics so far...

I decided to do the front of the headstock glossy, and everything else in satin. I think that's the way I'm gonna roll from now on. Glossy necks never gave me trouble, and I like the look (there's few things more satisfying than buffing up a finish to a high gloss, like a factory finish), so I never got hung up on having a satin finish, but I have to admit, this feel really nice!
I also decided to get rid of the finish on the fingerboard. The spar urethane really made it look yellow... At first, it didn't bother me too much, and I conned myself that it looked like an aged patina, but this is not going to be a relic'd bass, and an aged neck on a shiny, new body doesn't make much sense. The more I looked at it, the more I thought it just looked gross.
I wanted to use a set of Wilkinson vintage-style tuners on this. I put these on almost all of my basses (almost all the guitar hardware I buy anymore is Wilkinson), but it looks like this headstock is apparently a little smaller than a standard Fender headstock.
Fortunately, I have more sets of bass tuners than a sane man who doesn't manufacture basses ought to have, so I used a set of tuners from a MIM Jazz bass that always served me well.

Continued in next post

And since I'm still struggling with color issues with cell phones and digital cameras, I thought I'd take some practice "beauty shots" of the nearly completed bass. These didn't come out too bad... I've lost all my objectivity at this point. I just hope I can remember how to duplicate these conditions (or improve on them) the next time I take pictures for real.

Well I was all bummed out that I wasn't going to get the neck pickup until next week, but when I checked the tracking this morning, it said it'll be here today! Woo-hoo!

Now I'm on the horns of dilemma... I'm not sure whether to put round-wound, or flat-wound strings on it. I was going to use round-wound strings, which is why I wanted to put a finish on the fingerboard, but since I'm going unfinished, I'm a little concerned about the strings eating into the rosewood.

Ernie Ball's Cobalt flat-wound bass strings sound almost like rounds, but you can't get those bright harmonics out of them. Last night I was playing "Continuum" by Jaco (well, the parts I could play), on my P-bass with EB flats, and I was bothered that I couldn't get the harmonics in the opening of the song to ring out.

I may be worrying too much about the damage rounds will do to the fretboard. Rosewood is a pretty hard wood, and it's not like this fretless is going to be my 'go-to' bass that I'll be playing all the time...

But maybe it could be...

Really looking great there. Love the look of the fret lines too.

Ok, I got the Custom Shop pickup on Friday and wasted no time installing it. I also came across a Seymour Duncan "Quarter pound" bridge pickup that I forgot I had and decided to install that instead of the Fender "Original", as I thought it would be a better match to the Custom Shop.
I also forgot to mention that I installed a Fender "period correct" threaded saddle bridge, which was what they used on the '62 Jazz Bass.
And this is about as clean and scratch-free you're going to ever see this control plate (spoiler: it's already got light scratches on it from rubbing off fingerprints for photos).
I just happened to have a full set of flat-top barrel knobs, which almost never happens. I have a whole mess of knobs around here, and usually, if I need four, I've got three, and if I need three, I've got two. Got lucky with that... What I didn't get lucky with were the pots I used. I have drawer full of pots in one of my parts organizers, and 250K pots were scarce. I only had 3, and they had all been used in something else. One of them had a .047 cap soldered to it already, so I considered that a bonus, until I went through the meticulous process of stringing and setting up the bass (more on that in a minute) only to find out that it was completely dead.

I took that as a good sign. No signal is easier to diagnose than a buzzy noisy signal. I figured I probably just forgot to solder one of the wires, or something. All the cavities in this bass were shielded with a ground wires going into the control cavity, which made for more wires than I'm used to having to deal with, and it would have been easy to overlook something. Well, the wiring and all the solder joints were fine, but I discovered that the tone pot was broken. The wafer that the lugs were mounted to was cracked, and the wiper was clicking and scraping against something. I hadn't noticed this when I soldered it. I think when it got pressed into the control cavity against some wires, it may have been enough to further break the piece.

Anyway, long-story-short, it turns out the other two pots were bad as well, and I ended up replacing them all with 500k pots. Doesn't really matter. It's still got a .047 cap.

Setting up a fretless bass is a little trickier than setting up a fretted one. First, I had to set the intonation, which was an uncertain affair. I believe you should check intonation against the fretted/fingered note, and not the harmonic, but on a frettless, where just rolling your finger slightly can make the tuner register a sharp note, it's hard to be certain that your finger is exactly on the right spot (or maybe I was down with OCD... Yeah, you know me). But I think I got it set as accurately as humanly possible without a strobe tuner.

Next, I had to sand off some material from the bottom of the bone nut to compensate for the lack of frets. The only way to do that is to sand it down a little, and then put it back in the neck, tune up the bass, and see if the first notes are sharp... Lather, rinse repeat. Again, like with the intonation, it was a matter of getting it as close as possible.

I had set the action "roughly" to something close to what I wanted it to be before I started working on the nut, and I was to find out later, after everything else had been dialed in, that you have to make some compromises when it comes to action. You're going to get a little buzzing from the strings vibrating against the wood. That's part of the "mwah" sound that fretless basses are known for, but you don't want too much of that. You need to have more space for string excursion on a fretless, I think, since it's making direct contact with the wood, which means the action needs to be a little higher than I'm used to. Not so much that it's a struggle, just something to get used to.

I debated for a long time whether to put round-wound, or flat-wound strings on it. I had a set of both DR Lo-Riders and Ernie Ball cobalt flats (best sounding flat-wound bass strings on the planet IMO). I had decided I was going to put flays on it for the longest time, but the closer it got time to make a decision, I knew I wouldn't be happy until I heard it with rounds on it (what Jaco used), so I put the DRs on it (but now I want to hear what it sounds like with the flats!).

Ok, so what does it sound like?

In a word... It sounds like a monster! The CS in the neck and the SDQP in the bridge really work well together. They're both aggressive sounding pickups with similar output. With the round-wound strings, it's got all the growl and ring that a Jazz bass should. It gets deep and hits hard, with the added chorusey, mwha character of a fretless. And it sustains forever! I didn't mention anything about neck fitment earlier (always a risk when mating different bodies and necks together), but this neck fit the pocket nice and snug, like they were made for each other. I think that's a big factor. You can't even put this bass in a stand with the amp on. The strings just ring and ring until a feedback swell slowly starts to develop. This bass does NOT need a Badass bridge!

Playing it in tune is more of a challenge than of a fretted bass, of course, but it's not as hard, or frustrating as I thought it would be. I've got pretty good pitch, and it didn't take long before I found I was playing the bass without looking at my hands. I always did drift off the notes, but I could hear it. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to hear if a note were a semi-tone off, but I can. The margin for error isn't quite as narrow as I imagined it would be. You have a fair degree of latitude before the note sounds "wrong".

I haven't been able to put this thing down for long since I got everything dialed in (it's taken me a while to write this!), but I took a couple of quick shots so y'all can see it completed. I'm going to take some "beauty shots" later, but not till I get some more playing out of my system!