Recent content by BenWilliams

People ask me how I play in tune without frets. I explain that the human voice doesn't have frets either, but we figure out how to sing in tune. Really, playing fretless bass in tune is almost exactly like singing in tune.

I'm still regularly playing the Ampeg Fretless AMUB I bought in 1975, which has side dot markings only. Training the muscle memory into my left hand for in-tune finger placement was the key to playing fretless for me. I developed my 2-octave scale practice routine around playing 4-note...

Sometimes it's not the strings as much as it can be the position of your sound post. When a bass sounds midrangey or 'pinched', the soundpost may be either too tight to start with (that's more often what I find), or positioned too close to the bridge foot (north-south), or might need to be moved...

I had to put spiros on so my Krivo magnetic pickup would do it's thing, but they played pretty stiffly for my taste. So, with spiros I like my string heights lower, like 4mm-10mm, but this string height also requires that I plane the fingerboard to a fairly shallow scoop, around .068" FWIW -...

You'd need a new fingerboard too if it has that flat side for the E string.

After many consecutive nights of hard gigging or practicing resulting in raw, painful fingertips, I have a cool trick for restoring them and quickly building callouses. This is also a trick I teach every student I may have. First, get a large, prolific aloe vera plant at home that you don't...