- Fretless
- Y
Selling this new/vintage five string fretless. A little back story, I designed and built a four string fretless for myself back in 1985. At about that time five string was emerging as the newset thing as well as piezo pickups. In 1986 I designed and started to build this five string to use self made piezo saddles and electronics (none were available at the time). To shorten the story I moved to another province and through several apartments this sat unfinished. About six years ago I built a five string with ebony and padauk with Graphtech piezo saddles and commercially available preamp and hence this five became redundant yet still unfinished. Recently I brought out all my old projects to complete them. So this one got finished. It has a Schaller five string bridge and I routed it to install generic soapbar humbuckers. The tuners are also generic as my intent was to complete it. I expect that a new owner would install the pickups of their choice and upgrade the tuners as they saw fit. Having said that the parts installed work very well. It is wired passive with VVT setup. It has CTS pots and Alco switches. There is a coil tap switch for each pickup and when both are tapped they are still humbucking. The third switch is a capacitor selector for the tone control. It switches between .02 to .04uF. From the original electronics design I had an extra hole to fill and I always wanted to check out different caps for the tone. The finish was applied 33 years ago and I did not work it further. It was polished out and left with it's vintage patina. So essentially this is a new 33 year old bass. The neck and body is quarter sawn teak with ebony stringers, fingerboard and headstock overlay. The body is 1 5/8" thick and is carved convex on the top and concave at the back (see picture). Width at the nut is 1 3/4" and at the 24th fret is 2 9/16". Bridge saddle spacing is 16.5mm as per the Schaller bridge. Neck thickness at the 1st fret is 13/16" and at the 12th is 57/64". The body was bored internally to reduce weight and it weighs in at 9 lbs 13 oz. The body is routed underneath the bridge for piezo installation if so desired. Also there is plenty of room in the control cavity for active electronics if desired. It it strung with D'addario Chromes flat wound gauges .045, .065, .080, .100 and .132. The scale length is 34". Comes equipped with Jim Dunlop flush mounted strap locks. I have a used (decent clean condition) generic P/J style case to ship it in included in the price. Have a look at all the photos. Price is USD and cost to ship will be extra based on destination. For anyone local pickup can be arranged.
