Fretless Pino on a budget

[ead]

Hi folks

 

I've always loved the Stingray fretless sound, but they are quite a few quid especially his sig bass, so I set myself a task to see what could be done for not too many £s to get the look and as much of the tone as possible.  Here's what happened next...

 

I picked up a preloved DiMavery MM501 fretless as a starting point.  Actually a lot nicer that I thought it might be, well put together (even with quite a weird passive set up).  Nice Rosewood board, lovely satin finish to the D profile neck and acceptable hardware.  Brucie bonus, it weighs less than 8lbs.

 

I acquired a Retrovibe Stinger '77 with the Retrovide AlNiCo MM pickup (wired in parallel for this project) and put it all together.  Finally I decided just to spray the midly unpleasant tort pickguard black to save a few quid.  I also swapped the original fit rounds for some LaBella LT flats.

 

Here's how it came out.  To my ears, and despite my huge talent deficit, I think it sounds pretty good and I am really pleased with the results.  If were to do any further upgrades, I think I'd go for a proper new pickguard, some better knobs to cover the nuts on the pots and maybe a nice metal or bone nut.

 

As ever my timing is appalling as my arthritis means I'm not playing much now, but if anyone is interested please PM me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 19 minutes ago by ead

[HeadlessBassist]

That looks lovely. Are you going to put some sound samples up?

[ead]

11 minutes ago, HeadlessBassist said:

That looks lovely. Are you going to put some sound samples up?

 

Thanks, very kind of you to say so.  I'm not sure yet about samples as I need to work out what I have that I can record with.  Secondly I would need written commitment that you wouldn't all point and laugh 😞