deksawyer Posted September 5, 2012 Share Posted September 5, 2012 This no name Jazz has probably had more money spent on it than any other bass I've ever had - I've owned it for 7-8 years. Started life as a £100 ebay special. Neck size/profile was superb and I knew I'd hang on to this one. I started modding it with a Badass II and a set of Bartolini pickups and an Audere pre-amp. Wow what a difference (no surprise there). It stayed that way until I sold the pickups/pre a year or so later. Next was an ACG EQ02 pre, combined with some Fender pickups. This was OK but a bit polite for my tastes so I had a local guitar maker route some bigger cavites for the Nordstrand Big Singles I bought (from here). Better, but I hade to ground the pole pieces to stop them fizzing when I touched them while I was playing. This has lasted for some time quite happily but due to it being the only bass I could sacrifice in order to turn it into a fretless (which in my 20 odd years of playing bass I'd never tried one), I thought I'd give it a go. I was given some thin white plastic strips from another local guitar maker, Steve Agnew ([url="http://www.steveagnew.co.uk/"]http://www.steveagnew.co.uk/[/url]), to use as a filler for the vacant frets months ago and had been sitting this on the back burner for ages until last week I thought, feck it, let's do this. I removed the frets with some fret pulling pliers, cleaned the slots with a junior hack saw and then glued the strips in place.....20 mins later I trimmed the ends and what was sticking up past the fingerboard with the fret pliers (bloomin handy things) and used a radius block to sand the board level. I did it in about an hour and the results are surprisingly satisfying. Once I'd set the action and neck relief, I lowered the nut to almost level with the fingerboard, for the ultimate fretless mwaaaahh sound. It's not 100% visually perfect, but it plays very well and I'm happy with it. I've been learing quite a few Mick Karn bass lines as well as listening to stuff like Brand X........no Pino yet though.... cheers D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimBobTTD Posted September 6, 2012 Share Posted September 6, 2012 Looks nice! I have something similar on the go...if you can count pulling the frets and leaving the bass in a corner for twelve months as "on the go"! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve-soar Posted September 6, 2012 Share Posted September 6, 2012 That's very cool, my lefty bro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wildus Posted September 6, 2012 Share Posted September 6, 2012 Look's Great i want it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conan Posted September 6, 2012 Share Posted September 6, 2012 (edited) What a coincidence! I am thinking of doing the same, and watched [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=115gvPzHMqw"]this[/url] yesterday. All ten parts!! Fascinating. [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=115gvPzHMqw"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=115gvPzHMqw[/url] Edited September 6, 2012 by Conan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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