Fretless bass survey

[funkgod]

@ Hellzero.... christ mate thats just obscene 🙂

 

sold my wal 6 string fretless because this 6r is better ! not joking, plays better, sounds better feels better, no dead spots and it was ridiculously cheap ( review on here somewhere)  , i still have a wal out of my wall collection of 7 and others i have had, including the midibass, ( which i should not have sold as i need it now) but can say for deffo they are not all made equally !

 

so here are my two for now

1 a HK 6, ( before they became wolf) burl poplar

2, Doug Wilks jazz, tiger stripe maple/ebony, with john east, MEC gold pickups, schallers

 

 

 

 

[prowla]

I occasionally pick up my fretless, do a couple of slides, play the bass solo from Lost Horizons (Mo Foster in the first MSG album), noodle about for a while, and then put it back down to wait for the next occasion.

One even rarer occasions, I pick up my Ashbory, but between its miniscue scale, being fretless, and rubber strings, it's almost impossible to play anything even remotely in tune.

[Roger2611]

I have a high end bass collection 4 string fretless, it spends most of its time in a case, I used to play fretless 70% of the time but in the last 10 years or so it has been 100% fretted work, I do miss playing it and really ought to dig it out and give it some love again

[Hellzero]

22 hours ago, Beer of the Bass said:

Here we go, it's had a number of changes over the years, it started out fretted, with a rickenbacker copy bridge and just the one pickup, then it's had a Dimarzio Model One, a Hammon Darkstar, then my homebuilt single coil under the mudbucker cover, and the toaster added. 

I quite like the rustic look of it and its history.

[Hellzero]

20 hours ago, funkgod said:

@ Hellzero.... christ mate thats just obscene 🙂

 

sold my wal 6 string fretless because this 6r is better ! not joking, plays better, sounds better feels better, no dead spots and it was ridiculously cheap ( review on here somewhere) a HK 6, ( before they became wolf) burl poplar

 

 

 

 

I had one of these too, when they appeared over here in continental Europe, that I played on a gig on the same day I received it and also on further ones 

 

The funny thing is that I've been complemented by almost all the audience for my great tone with this very bass, but not with my other high end fretless, a Leduc MP 628 SF, which to my ears was and still sounds better, but the mwah on the HK was just insane...

 

I guess that's what the audience loved.

 

Sadly the HK was so heavy and very head diving that I sold it some time later, but I really loved that insane mwah.

 

It's not pictured in my list as it was before I started to photograph each instrument getting in ... and out.

[Hellzero]

11 hours ago, Roger2611 said:

I have a high end bass collection 4 string fretless, it spends most of its time in a case, I used to play fretless 70% of the time but in the last 10 years or so it has been 100% fretted work, I do miss playing it and really ought to dig it out and give it some love again

And ...

 

[TheLowDown]

I have both fretted and a fretless, but I rarely play the fretless. I can see why people love the fretless but it's just not for me for the most part.

[SimonK]

Gigged this over the weekend - my trick is to have a boss GEB-7 EQ pedal to boost mid frequenceies for the fretless mwah sound.

 

[Stub Mandrel]

I'm thinking of songs that would suit fretless that I do. What Is and What Should Never Be would work well. Crossroads too, I  think Jack Bruce may have used fretless on the original.