sanding on down to china town

[red-hot-bassist]

whats the average price to get your fretboard sanded down? will this alter the tone afterwards?
you see....i play roundwounds on my fretless for that amazing bloody brilliant tone, and i qould quite like to keep it there,
whatdayathink?

[mac315]

From my perspective, every job is different. First, why do you want the fretboard sanded? Is it a fretted or fretless? Do you just want to clean it up or do you need to replace frets as well? Do you want to change the radius of the neck? Do you want to remove frets to make it fretless? I can go on and on.

If all you need is a fret dressing then the job could be as cheap as $75 to $100 dollars for leveling, recrowning, and polishing of a 4 or 5 string.

If you need more work done, depending on what you need it could be as much as $800. This would include the above price plus costs of laquer, polish, etc, repair work, modifications or more.

A fret dressing plus repair job to the finish would be around $150 to $175 again depending on the work that needed to be done.

All luthiers are different, and different areas in the US may charge more or less.

Typically, sanding the fretboard to correct wear will not change the tonal quality of the instrument.

Joe Weiss
Weiss Custom Basses

[red-hot-bassist]

thanks joe,
as i said in my first post it is a fretless, it is 2nd hand, and i havent owned it that long and it hadn't been played much beofre me, but i can see the marks beginning to appear on the fretboard, and everyone i know tells me to change my strings to flatwound, but i dont want to sacrifice the tone,
just wondered how expensive and if it would alter that tone tone at all to get it sanded,

[mac315]

I did not notice the "fretless" part. It should not be that expensive to do what you ask. Actually if you have a radius gauge and 400 grit sandpaper you could do it yourselft. And yes, change to flat wound strings to avoid that problem. I would say you could get that done for around $100 if you took it to a luthier depending on the amount of scarring on the neck and if you have any fancy inlay that they need to worry about.

And no, it should not alter your tone.

Joe Weiss
Weiss Custom Basses