Fretless monstruosity for £30 - *WITHDRAWN* £30 Bromley

[Paolo85]

So, the bottom line: this bass looks horrible and rattles, but it sounds good, it has a good fingerboard and it's cheap, so if you want to check if fretless may be for you for the cost of a set of strings, this could be a good option. It's pickup only from Bromley so if you you'd be able to try it.

Strings are great LaBella tapewounds that cost more than the bass.

This is (was) Fazley PJ fretless. Those are decent basses, you can read commentary here

 

 

Mine cost me £85. It was good but superheavy. I play standing exclusively and hate heavy basses. At some point Fazley cut the price to £50. I was not smart enough to realise it was because they were going to discontinue them. So I thought "ok, resale price is zero, let's try to make it lighter, it may be fun".

So I chopped the headstock and started drilling holes in the body (this was inspired by somebody else in BC, when THEY did it, it looked neat..)

To fit the smaller 2+2 headstock, I fit tuners from an Ibanez.

Now there is a rattle around the hesdstock. I doubt it is because of the neck break angle as it continues even if I hold the strings past the nut with my hands. My impression is that something is wrong with the tuners. Still, the rattle does not get amplified, maybe just faintly on a bad day.

Other issues to note are that there is alluminum tape under the bridge (the grounding is still there working fine) which I put there to lift thr bridge as the pickups were too close to the strings. There are bits of painters tape on the body that got a bit sticky, I'll try to clean before the sale. One of the neck screws is not the original one. There are some screrches. And there is a black metal plate drilled in at the back which I used to hold the bass as an upright for a few days (long story).

Also, I sanded and refinished the neck with tru oil and ot was a sloppy job.

I am aware I should be ashamed of putting this on BC but I need space, I have given up on fretless and don't see this changing anytime soon as I now play guitar more than bass. And I don't want to deal with nutters on eBay

Pics in the next post

 

 

 

 

Edited March 3 by Paolo85

[Paolo85]

[cdog]

WOW that's really interesting. How did the reduced headstock affect the neck dive? I'm often wondering how much that could reduce the pull on the neck. 

I've also wondered about drilling holes in the body. 

GLWTS! 

[Paolo85]

1 minute ago, cdog said:

WOW that's really interesting. How did the reduced headstock affect the neck dive? I'm often wondering how much that could reduce the pull on the neck. 

I've also wondered about drilling holes in the body. 

GLWTS! 

Thanks. The neck has become significantly lighter. Note however that the new tuners are also smaller and much lighter than the original.

As you can see I have not drilled much into the body. It has made a difference but not huge. At the moment the bass is slightly more body heavy than neck heavy. The plan was to drill more holes but I kind of lost enthusiasm as, truth to be told, the bass is lighter bit still a fairly heavy bass. There is no changing that. The neck is a sturdy P neck and thick back to front. Very stable but needs some substantial body weigh to avoid neck dive. In hindsight it was fun but a waste of energy. The rare occasions I want to play fretless I play sitting down