new neck vs. installing frets on a fretless

[bassandbeyond]

I have a Frankenfender fretless with Warmoth Jazz neck (ebony board). My other fretless bass suits my needs better, so I really have no use for this bass as a fretless, but I do like the neck. The fingerboard is a beautiful piece of straight grained, unlined ebony (my favorite wood for fretted fingerboards), with very little wear from playing. It seems to me that it should be cheaper to get frets installed on such a neck than to buy a complete replacement neck of decent quality. However, when I inquired with a couple of repaimen/luthiers, they quoted prohibitively high prices (up to $400) to do the job. Several people have suggested that I just buy a new fretted neck and keep the fretless neck as a spare, but I really have no use for a spare, and I'd like to keep the Warmoth neck. Why is it so difficult/expensive to install frets on a finished neck?

[Nick Kay]

Ebony is really difficult to apply frets to. It's very hard, but also very brittle, so it has a tendency to crack and split. Similarly, as you said, the neck is finished. You'd have to remove the finish first, then refinish it after. Any luthier worth his salt can pull it off, but it WILL be expensive, since there is a lot more time and care involved than a regular fretless > fretted conversion.

I'd heartily suggest picking up another Warmoth neck. You never know when you'll need a fretless Jazz neck, and you have a chance of destroying it if you try to put frets on it.

[Benjamin Strange]

$400 sounds about right. We charge $300 do do a standard fret job in our shop (best $300 you will ever spend, by the way), so having to cut fretslots in an ebony board could easily add $100. Ebony can be hard to work with, as it does like to stick to saws and chip easily, but it can be done.

There shouldn't be any issues installing frets on a finished neck whatsoever, unless you mean the board itself has a finish on it.

[therex]

buy a new neck from warmoth would be much cheaper and probably better IMO

[bassandbeyond]

Okay, thanks for the advice. I guess I'll just buy another neck. But I'm still mystified as to why it would be cheaper to buy an entire fretted neck with ebony board??? I mean, if you build a neck from scratch, you still have to go through all that trouble of installing frets in it, right?

P.S. The fingerboard on my current neck is unfinished. Sorry for being unclear about that.

[Benjamin Strange]

Originally Posted by bassandbeyond

Okay, thanks for the advice. I guess I'll just buy another neck. But I'm still mystified as to why it would be cheaper to buy an entire fretted neck with ebony board??? I mean, if you build a neck from scratch, you still have to go through all that trouble of installing frets in it, right?

P.S. The fingerboard on my current neck is unfinished. Sorry for being unclear about that.

There's lots of reasons. First, most necks are at least partially if not wholly CNC machined, and the fret slots are cut before the fretboard is installed - and they are also cut with a machine. Your fret slots will have to be cut by hand, making allowances for fretboard radius. Then there's the whole issue of compression fretting, making sure the neck doesn't have a permanent backbow due to the fret tangs expanding the board, etc., etc., etc. Also your side dots will have to be moved. It's not a simple cut and dry process compared to fashioning a new, mass produced neck.

[bassandbeyond]

Very interesting! Thanks for the explanation. Now I'm satisfied.