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 1 hour 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 😞

[HeadlessBassist]

I'll give you that guarantee by all means   I'm a classically trained Cellist and Double Bass player, but I don't usually touch fretless electric bass, probably for the same reasons! 

[ead]

35 minutes ago, HeadlessBassist said:

I'll give you that guarantee by all means   I'm a classically trained Cellist and Double Bass player, but I don't usually touch fretless electric bass, probably for the same reasons! 

 

Interesting, I used to play the violin to a decent standard .  Probs why the second bass I ever bought was fretless.