TRB-5II Fretless transfomation

Hi,

Just wanted to share a little bass success story with you guys.

Recently, I bought a pre-owned Yamaha TRB5-II bass on ebay. It had been made fretless, and for some reason the previous owner had decided to put in ebony lines, which made the lines almost invisible when playing anywhere but in direct sunlight (which almost never happens during my kind of gigs...).

Here is a pic of the bass when I first got it:
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Further, the neck was not in a super state, and the action needed to be set pretty high to play without buzzing...

So, I decided to have it 'restored'. I have been using the great Danish luthier, Johnny Mørch, several times, and even though he is not the cheapest luthier around, he is definitely one of the best (same league as Christian Celinder).

I wanted him to change the ebony lines to maple lines and fix the neck. Further, I wanted to have the neck coated as I had tried a fretless Celinder Update with lacquer on the fretboard and to my ears it made the bass sing like crazy. So, he gave it 15 coats of a super thin and hard nitrocellulose lacquer...

Here is the result, and I am happy to say that it plays like butter, and it sounds amazing. The 'restoration' was almost as expensive as the bass itself, but it was worth every penny, and it is still a relatively cheap bass considering the fact that I had been looking for a 5-string fretless Celinder, which would have cost at least three times as much.

Well, here it is:
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YCBass said:

I used to own one of these and the stock fretlines were Maple I believe... But they were so thin I could barely see them. It made for a cool look but it was hard to play for me. These are great basses!

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OK, I wasn't even aware that these basses were made as fretless from factory. Anyway, mine was born with frets, so the lines are pretty visible - works just great for me