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[Pacman]

Originally Posted by nostatic

There was a time where I was 97% fretless. I'd pull out the fretted for one or two tunes where I wanted a more traditional slap tone but beyond that it stayed in the bag. If your chops are up, it certainly can be done and get addicting because you can actually do a vibrator that doesn't always go sharp.

Ignoring the low-hanging fruit (since Gard picked it clean anyway), it is perfectly possible to do a vibrato that goes both above and below the pitch on a fretted instrument. In fact, it's the only vibrato I use.

[Pacman]

Todd, you deleted your question, but I'll go ahead and answer it as best I can here.

I use classical guitar vibrato, which is achieved not by bending the string, but by using a "push/pull" action with the string. Fret a note, and then "push" in the direction of the string, towards the bridge. That actually slightly lowers the tension of the string, sending the note flat. Using the same axis (that of the string), "pull" the string tighter back towards the nut. This raises the pitch.

[nostatic]

Hi Jon, thanks for the clarification. I did a little research and found references to axial vibrato which is what you're describing. Turns out I do that as well (but didn't know the proper term), especially since I come from a guitar background. I find with bass though that I can only make that really work on higher strings - the low frequencies just don't have enough pitch shift to stand out. That's why I'll sometimes default to a string bend which is only pitch up from the note. With fretless I can get more of a warble with the axial vibrato on lower strings.