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BEST FRETLESS for 3,000.00? help!!

#61
Well, I suppose since Marshall went and posted pics of his Martin Keith basses I should show my fretless Elfin 5 (from the 2010 NAMM Show). :bassist:

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Check out the June 2010 issue of Bass Player for a review of it! :hyper:
 
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#68
Yeah, I've had two F-Bass fretlesses (and one fretted), and while they were great, I prefer my Martin Keiths, which are also 34.5" scale. Of course, I completely agree that this stuff is very subjective.

That Bee bass looks so cool!
 
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#71
4 gigs in, and while still technically in the honeymoon phase, I've owned enough nice basses to know when one is killing - and this one totally is. Not many Smith fretli out there but I think the pickups/preamp are perfectly voiced for fretless. Plus this thing gets a crazy good sound when you pluck over the neck.

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#72
Sandberg makes some really nice fretless basses.

Custom Thinline. Has a hollow body and is availabe with fretlines or without fretlines

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Panther Special 5. You can order this bass with 10 different exotic wood tops available

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Most of their basses are availabe fretless. Just email them
 
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#73
I don't know if you are in a hurry? For that kind of money you might get Alan at ACG to build you a stunning custom fretless. Alan has a large stock of both understated as well as rather spectacular woods. All basses are hand made in his one man shop with great craftsmanship. They balance well on a strap and are a joy to play. His custom pickups, filter pre's and wide choice of fingerboards are unique. Have a look at his [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]. I own two of his fretless 5 strings, one lined one unlined+chambered. They are among the very best that I have ever been able to lay my hands on.
 
#75
Martin did good with this pickup placement choice. Another cool thing is his coil splitting setup. This is a passive bass with Volume, Pan, Tone controls; the tone control has a pull switch on it that changes the function of the Pan control. When down the Pan works like normal to go from one humbucking Citron pickup to the other; with the control pulled up the Pan goes from the neck side coil of the "neck" pickup and the bridge side coil of the bridge pickup acting as one large humbucking pickup through to the other two coils (the "inner" adjacent coils) acting together as a humbucking pickup. In essence the Pan control acts as a "Width" control to adjust how wide the "pickup" is.
 
#76
One other note on the Smith - the pan knob actually works well. Almost every other active bass I've played has a pan knob that is little more than an on/off switch. Very little mixing of the pickups other than 50/50 - it quickly goes to 100% front or back. It was funny because when I first got the fretted Smith I was looking for the "nasty P-bass" tone and I couldn't quite get there. Then I noticed that I wasn't fully panned to the neck pup - as my other PJs gets you to that tone not far off the indent. I rolled it all the way and the tone changed quite a bit. So instead of essentially 3 sounds, there are quite a few more, and I can actually use the pan as more of a tone fine tune rather than pickup on/off. Between that and the series/parallel switches, lots of sounds and feels without touching the eq knobs. Another interesting tidbit - I don't think the fretted sounds great when plucked up the neck. To me it has a fairly narrow area for the right hand where the bass really speaks. The fretless however works all over the place, though you do have some volume and attack loss when you're plucking over the neck. But the notes speak well there.
 

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