Another defret thread

I just deftetted my Peavey Milestone III. I must say, wow It's a completely different bass now!

After I got my 5-stringer, the versatility of it kept overshadowing my Peavey. I started to get bored of it because I couldn't get the kind of sound I wanted out of it. For months I've been playing around with the idea of defretting it. Last night, I had the tools and I decided to hell with it, why not?

I've heard that when you start out, it's pretty easy to chip the fretboard, so I decided to start at the top of the fretboard rather than around the more played bottom frets. I actually had no chipping problems until I got to the bottom frets, rofl

I got the frets out in about 45 minutes. It's not as hard as one might think it is. The sound... I love it! This bass sounds like it was made for fretless playing. The fretted sound was good for the price, but still mediocre. The fretless sound, to me, sounds very good. Plenty of mwah, and the resonance and sustain is considerably better to my ears.

So I've learned that if you're interested in fretless and have an older bass that you can defret, it is way more than worth it. It completely changed the instrument for me, and hopefully now my technique will be improved upon, also, by practicing fretless. Very awesome; anyone who's been wanting to do it, I say go for it!

 

Oh, and anyone who's wondering - I used the flathead screwdriver and hammer to chisel out the frets technique. Some of the frets came out very easily, other's didn't want to leave their home. I have a few bent frets from trying to pry and chisel them from their slots. Fortunately none of them caused any damage at all to the fretboard

 

Lol, I must admit I haven't completed it yet I'm still playing with the empty trenches, which I doubt very much is good. I'm going to fill them with wood filler, though... I wont play with empty slot-holes forever

 

Thank you, I had forgotten about that article before. I'll definately consider that when filling the holes