Quote:
Originally Posted by Grant Bass  well; are they 'humps' or 'divets'?
if there are gaps i would try to match the colour with epoxy; if you do that you will now have humps, where if you originally did; i would re-level the surface;
kinda long dead flat block with appropriate sand paper; and level it the same way as a fret dress; lotsa tutorials on this; what did you fill in the fret slots with? id assume you would have already had to do something like this to level those down? |
They are humps and divots! The problem is that the block inlays were a bad fretless idea. The fret slots were filled by the factory (It was supposed to be a fretless neck!) They look like they are filled with black epoxy. They are smooth and no problem. The block inlays were also installed by the factory.
The block inlays on the other hand seem to be some sort of gray plastic that really doesn't look too bad. But the installation is rather ratty. Some are coming loose. They are "wavy" and obviously were never "leveled" with the rest of the neck. And I don't know if you are familiar with SX necks but they are entirely covered with a thick clear poly coating which in this case is ALSO all over the fingerboard! (Note my other fretless SX has bare natural wood on the fingerboard and it plays fabulously).
So currently my plan was to somehow strip or sand the heavy poly off the fingerboard top surface. Pry out the plastic block inlays. Install "something" as new inlays. Level the whole neck and then either leave it natural bare wood or give it a coat of hard polyurethane to resist wear and brighten the tone.
The "question" here is what should the inlays be? Filling the inlay depressions with black epoxy seems easiest. And it's sandable for leveling. Also would match the filling in the fretlines. It would probably work fine if I coat the neck surface.
But if I leave it bare, I'd sort of like to have the inlays dark wood so the tone won't change as you slide over one of those big blocks. The whole surface then would at least be some kind of natural wood. But cutting and installing dark veneer inlays seems like a pretty tough job for a noob...although granted the rectangular shapes don't get much simpler!
And finally there is the issue of the neck flexing where brittle materials seem like they might not work or shiny hard materials that cant be leveled or won't stick to glue so they pop out (like the plastic originals did).
So What do you think? Am I on the right track here or am I headed for trouble?
Note the rest of the project has gone great which included installing threaded inserts into the necks (both fretted and fretless), finding, buying (not so simple!) and installing the appropriate tuning machines, and installing and shimming the fretless neck. That's when I discovered the inlay problem!
