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Fretless bass survey  

210 members have voted

  1. 1. Which of the following applies to you.....?

    • I do not own a fretless bass
      31
    • I own both fretted and fretless basses
      132
    • I own only fretless basses (no fretted)
      2
    • I do own a fretless bass but never play it
      15
    • I own a fretted bass but never play it, I play fretless only
      5
    • I used to own a fretless bass but don't anymore
      25


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Posted

@ 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

 

20250719_124040.thumb.jpg.b0f9f0131380d9d46904b63b4c5e50c1.jpg

20250719_124051.thumb.jpg.30a67b11602fc665c8464644162b3f86.jpg

20250719_124058.thumb.jpg.e04f693afdd265434750ee7b1906442f.jpg

20250719_124107.thumb.jpg.b591e0e7d984146b7781bb172edb15dc.jpg

20250719_124118.thumb.jpg.59f17f1e19302758798fec5ca65a75fa.jpg

 

 

 

  • Like 2
Posted

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.

  • Sad 1
Posted

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

Posted
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. 

20250719_113303.thumb.jpg.8eb230e9007b934c02e86162df65f902.jpg20250719_113309.thumb.jpg.a7fd44ed8bcfdd72b8685236666a7a55.jpg

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

Posted
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

 

20250719_124040.thumb.jpg.b0f9f0131380d9d46904b63b4c5e50c1.jpg

 

20250719_124058.thumb.jpg.e04f693afdd265434750ee7b1906442f.jpg

 

20250719_124118.thumb.jpg.59f17f1e19302758798fec5ca65a75fa.jpg

 

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.

Posted
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 ...

 

:useless:

  • Like 1
Posted

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.

Posted

Hill street blues theme 

Eagles - One of these nights 

Walk on the wild side 

Practically any jazz song is good for fretless. Long, singing notes sound very different. I think fretless is best suited for simple lines. All extra can be cut away, and still - or because of that - sound so good. 

Posted

Re fretless playing, it's all horses for courses of course, but for me, I play fretless and fretted very similarly as opposed to seeing each as needing a specific style/technique/genre - I often use fretless at rehearsal and gigs playing ostensible 'standard' bass parts, and always enjoy when someone says "I didn't realise you were playing fretless" (our keys player being a great example, I'd been playing fretless every week for three months before he noticed), which to my mind is far more of a compliment than producing lots of slides and double stops etc and having people say "I love the sound of fretless bass". 

 

 

  • Like 2
Posted

The only thing that doesn't work particularly well on a fretless is slap. I "could" play pretty much anything else on my fretless, although often it's easier to just go for a fretted bass if I'm not after mwah in particular.

Posted
2 minutes ago, SimonK said:

The only thing that doesn't work particularly well on a fretless is slap. I "could" play pretty much anything else on my fretless, although often it's easier to just go for a fretted bass if I'm not after mwah in particular.

 

Differences between fretted and fretless are greater with slap that other styles - frets have a hug effect on slap tone - but I'd argue it's less a case of 'doesn't work particularly well' and more a case of 'works very well when used appropriately', one example for me being Bakithi Kumalo on the Graceland album (I may be repeating myself here) 👍 

  • Like 2
Posted

At present I've only got this:

 

61f5ab53-d39d-4b18-bd4a-b2f8d2aff0d4.thumb.jpg.a6051d2e169d7582a8d7d3a0d79d8d2a.jpg

 

I'd quite like another fretless but I almost always end up playing double bass these days so it seems a bit of an extravagance (and I will be knocked out of the gear abstention challenge).
This one (with Villex pickups) also crosses over with the fake Fender decals thread... :$


cc174ea7-db32-4093-8fca-7c27b2082418.thumb.jpg.87ec1a782e5d3bd13ad50e6be36dc372.jpg
 

Taking the neck off reveals a "Fender" stamp due to it being licensed (the body's from the same source). The decal (easily removable) is only there for the "well, you didn't bring a proper bass but at least that electric one's a Fender" crowd. 

  • Like 2
Posted
9 hours ago, Beedster said:

Re fretless playing, it's all horses for courses of course, but for me, I play fretless and fretted very similarly as opposed to seeing each as needing a specific style/technique/genre - I often use fretless at rehearsal and gigs playing ostensible 'standard' bass parts, and always enjoy when someone says "I didn't realise you were playing fretless" (our keys player being a great example, I'd been playing fretless every week for three months before he noticed), which to my mind is far more of a compliment than producing lots of slides and double stops etc and having people say "I love the sound of fretless bass". 

 

It took my former bandmates a year to realise. I play fretless the same as fretted for some things, for others I play it with a more, well, fretless feel to it - depends on what I want to accomplish.

  • Like 1
Posted

On a record I used two Leduc basses: a fretless Masterpiece MP 628 SF and a fretted U-Basse 6 MM.

 

Exactly these very two:

 

301617844_LeducMP628SF7468-K(1).thumb.jpg.e190e645a7c1b099271d61e0bba16c59.jpg

 

1851704438_LeducU-MM68014-U1998(13).thumb.jpg.506e8ff213a1a762c159bf81f65a7201.jpg

 

When the CD was released, everyone listening to it complimented me for my fretless playing on all titles, ... when half of them were played on a fretted bass.

 

So the opposite is also possible. 😉

  • Like 3
  • Haha 1
Posted
1 hour ago, Hellzero said:

On a record I used two Leduc basses: a fretless Masterpiece MP 628 SF and a fretted U-Basse 6 MM.

 

Exactly these very two:

 

301617844_LeducMP628SF7468-K(1).thumb.jpg.e190e645a7c1b099271d61e0bba16c59.jpg

 

1851704438_LeducU-MM68014-U1998(13).thumb.jpg.506e8ff213a1a762c159bf81f65a7201.jpg

 

When the CD was released, everyone listening to it complimented me for my fretless playing on all titles, ... when half of them were played on a fretted bass.

 

So the opposite is also possible. 😉


I’d always assumed Barry Adamson played FL on some of Magazine’s late 70’s/early 80’s but the same is true. As ever, it’s less what you play, and more how you play it 👍

  • Thanks 1

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