An idea I came up with in my sleep. :P A transformer neck.

I'm pretty sure it was Musicman who built a few prototypes of necks that had switchable fingerboards sometime in the early 1980s. Somebody check my facts here, 'cause I'm hazy, but didn't Tony Levin get one... or demo one... or... something?

 

I don't remember Musicman doing it but I know there was a neck with swappable magnetic fingerboards. I believe there also was one where the frets retracted and became flush with the fretboard.

 

You could just buy a fretless neck and switch one of you current basses over.

I know of folks on tb that buy Carvin SB's and then get a fretless neck made for it and swap them back and forth.

EDIT: Retractable frets bass

 

I've seen somewhere on here replaceable fretboards. It was held on by a large magnet the length of the neck.

 

Di Piazza (yes that guy)'s fretless bridge, and a demonstration video by Di Piazza himself.

A different system where you can switch between fretted/fretless in less than a second.

Also, retractable frets.

There are several ways to do this, and your idea of switching fingerboards... I don't see it happening (read: becoming practical in any way).

 

I have to be honest I am having a hard time even imagining what you are talking about.

I would think no matter what you came up with it would not make a cost effective neck and would be pricy to implement. And if you are going to pay a premium for a neck why not just buy a fretted and a fretless bass? Unless you literally wanted to switch mid song, it's not any harder to do than doing what you are describing.

The other methods described did not take off which is why they are no longer around. I doubt you would find anyone interested in pursuing what you are suggesting because there isn't really a market for it. But give it a try you never know.

 

A fretless bass from SX rondomusic is roughly $100. Do you think you can modify a bass for less than that, and retain quality?

The bass neck has more than a hundred pounds of tension on it due to the strings. Any design that has removable fingerboard/neck etc has to have mounting points that can handle such stress. Basically, if your replaceable fretboard slots into a groove in the neck, the relief setting on the truss rod and the string tension will prevent you slotting your fingerboard in because the neck won't be fully straight.

 

Novatone.

 

Of course it has been done, but I'm not so sure of the utility of it. I rigged one of my SX basses with both a fretted and fretless neck. I installed threaded inserts to keep screws from stripping, but I'm not impressed with it. It's just too much work to change over and then you have to deal with the tweaking the setup each time to get it totally right. A changeable fingerboard is better but still takes too much effort.

I've become convinced that the way to go is a fretted/fretless bass where the frets raise an lower with a lever. That way you can switch right in the middle of a song. Now THAT is cool.

And as I've mentioned here before several times, Randy Stockwell a local luthier makes a truly fine fretted/fretless bass that changes with a lever (actually a sliding part). Bu they are about $4000 and he currently only sells them in 4 string. In spite of my offers of money he's not ready to start cranking out the 6 string I'm dying to own. The problem I'd guess is market is too small to justify making a whole nother set of jigs, clamps and fixtures for making 5 or 6 string basses. Hey, Jaco only needed 4 strings!

 

Novatone made a removeable fretboard. NorCal BASSIX is doing a review video on a 77 pbass with the switchboard.