Can you make a Fretless sound less 'mwah'?
- By honeydorick
- Basses [BG]
- 93 Replies
I may be totaly wrong I am only an amature but here is what I did .I wanted lowest action possible,no fret noise or no buzz or no mwah from 3 experimental basses I built myself,to try multiple things.I wanted the deep low sound of a plucked double bass lots of sustain and no mwah sitar sound.I have acomplished that this way.First,is technique,Finger and dynamics hand control is very important.I installed marker lines on all my basses.I used D Adderio black tape wounds.My fret board is perfectly straight and flat but radiused to 9.5 inches The nut is extremely low. Since the truss rod only gives releif between the 1st and 12 th fret I radius some fall off between the 11 th fret and heal end of the neck to stop any mwah from the higher register.I found this works perfectly.since fretless is an intonating instrument you need to train your ears to position your fingers to hit the notes cleanly.I tune the open strings normally, and set my intonation as close as I can on the 12th fret line.Any thing in the upper register is fine tuned by your ear.With lots of practice you can do it.It takes time to feel comfortable on fretless.I use the lines only as refrence points for finger position.I finally get to play an electric bass that sounds like a double bass.once I got a taste of fretless with the beauty of noisless slides and vibrato I never went back to fretted.