day dreaming of an acoustic bass

[parttime]

howdy.

so i'm daydreaming at work, and not that i need any more music projects besides playing and practicing, but i have some thoughts and would like your professional opinions.

for awhile i've been thinking about getting an acoustic bass to play with a celt acoustic group i play with currently. one of the guys has an acoustic that i borrow for our rehearsals (not that we've had one in awhile), but he will not sell it to me even though he doesn't play bass!! i get it.

anyways, i also have been wanting a fretless bass but can't afford to keep buying gear. when dreaming today i looked up fretless acoustic basses that i could actually get locally or through amazon here (mainland europe), and the only option is a 1,100 euro dean that gets 1.5 stars. not gonna happen obviously. so then i thought, well, i could get a 150 euro acoustic bass from the local music shop and just defret it myself.

i'm handy with woodworking stuff though have never delved in to a musical instrument. is it possible to defret an acoustic bass? i mean, i know i can take the frets out and refill, but i'm mostly wondering about string height adjustment with the fixed bridge. could i maybe change out the nut to lower height? i looked around but couldn't find any specific thread on defretting an acoustic bass.

thanks for any experience or advice. Hope you all have a great friday!!

 

[parttime]

ah, so i was able to find an old thread here with some info but mostly talking about the strings to use after the defret. so obviously it has been done with success. MattS, are you still around?!

 

[Scoops]

ah, so i was able to find an old thread here with some info but mostly talking about the strings to use after the defret. so obviously it has been done with success. MattS, are you still around?!

If you wish to gets someones attention, put an @ sign infront of the persons name. It will send them a notice.

Example
Yo.......@MattS. @parttime is looking for you.

 

[dwizum]

Tag him with an @ in front of the name and it'll send him a notification that he was tagged: @parttime like that. I was going to tag him for you, but it looks like there are a few usernames close to that and I'm not sure which one you meant.

But I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work well. Lots of info out there on defretting in general and it should all apply to an acoustic bass. It's common to change out or modify the bridge saddle on an acoustic to get action set correctly, so no big deal there either.

 

[dwizum]

@Scoops beat me by a second! I wonder if the period in his name is breaking the tag function.

 

[Scoops]

@Scoops beat me by a second! I wonder if the period in his name is breaking the tag function.

I saw that and was playing with why it's not working

Don't know for sure, but I do know the . is part of his sig

 

[parttime]

ahhhh, thanks for the @ tips!!! @MattS.

i read an old thread about you defretting an acoustic. i then delved further about your approach to lowering the nut height. curious how that turned out and if the things plays ok and was worth the effort. hope you could see this, are still around, and might have some insoight for me. thanks!!

 

[Matt Liebenau]

There’s no reason it shouldn’t work. There is a thread in Hardware, setup and repair all about defreting. Read through that. After that, it’s just like setting up any other acoustic. You’ll most likely have to deepen the nut slots and lower the bridge saddle. Again, even if it’s not on here, there is plenty of instruction on setting up an acoustic guitar. The only thing you might make sure of if you get to examine the bass before purchasing is that the action is good with plenty of saddle sticking out of the bridge. We know the saddle is going to have to be lowered so, for example, if the frets are 0.040” that means you will probably have to remove in the area of 0.080” from the bridge saddle after the frets are gone. An ABG with just acceptable string height and barely any saddle sticking out of the bridge is going to cause additional repairs.

 

[parttime]

bridge saddle, right. and nut lowering. cool, that seems easy enough! hahahahahah...

maybe i can get my hand on a guitar soonish and try to do my first moddifying. if i can, i'll post some pics. thanks for the input all!

 

[T_Bone_TL]

Well, I don't know what your parameters are, but I can strongly suggest keeping an eye out for an inexpensive (that will almost certainly be "used") upright. They appear to work a whole lot better in un-amplified acoustic mode than an ABG does, and they are fretless by default.

(I happen to play [an inexpensive, Czech] upright in a celtic/trad group that is very anti-amplification)

 

[rickwrench]

I defretted an old Alvarez AB60 last year. It wasn't hard.
It's a pleasure to play now and it makes (made) into the lineup quite often. Before, it was literally a 20 year case queen. Typical ABG volume levels when acoustic -> way too quiet. So, nearly useless in an acoustic guitar jam. With a rubber sound hole plug, a foam mute, and played chicken finger up on the neck, it has a passable ersatz upright sound through an amp.
Link to pics:
Alvarez de-fretted

Rick

 

[-Asdfgh-]

howdy.

so i'm daydreaming at work, and not that i need any more music projects besides playing and practicing, but i have some thoughts and would like your professional opinions.

for awhile i've been thinking about getting an acoustic bass to play with a celt acoustic group i play with currently. one of the guys has an acoustic that i borrow for our rehearsals (not that we've had one in awhile), but he will not sell it to me even though he doesn't play bass!! i get it.

anyways, i also have been wanting a fretless bass but can't afford to keep buying gear. when dreaming today i looked up fretless acoustic basses that i could actually get locally or through amazon here (mainland europe), and the only option is a 1,100 euro dean that gets 1.5 stars. not gonna happen obviously. so then i thought, well, i could get a 150 euro acoustic bass from the local music shop and just defret it myself.

i'm handy with woodworking stuff though have never delved in to a musical instrument. is it possible to defret an acoustic bass? i mean, i know i can take the frets out and refill, but i'm mostly wondering about string height adjustment with the fixed bridge. could i maybe change out the nut to lower height? i looked around but couldn't find any specific thread on defretting an acoustic bass.

thanks for any experience or advice. Hope you all have a great friday!!

I'm surprised that you can only find one fretless acoustic. That's really odd.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

https://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_b_35bk_fl_acoustic_bass_series.htm

https://www.thomann.de/gb/warwick_rb_alien_standard_4_fl_nt.htm

https://www.thomann.de/gb/guild_b_240ef_acoustic_bass.htm

https://www.thomann.de/gb/warwick_rockbass_alien_standard_fl.htm

 

[-Asdfgh-]

Electro Acoustic Fretless Bass Guitar by Gear4music at Gear4music

That's the cheapest one I've (ever) seen.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

Electro Acoustic Fretless Bass Guitar by Gear4music at Gear4music

That's the cheapest one I've (ever) seen.

I got a cheap 12 string from G4M, and it is decent for the price, although I should probably tweak the nut but is otherwise fine. I got a 6 string acoustic too (a lock down instrument as everything else is in storage which I can't get to) and that definitely needs some minor fret levelling to get a really low action. Sadly, my gear for that job is also in storage. The preamps are so-so and I'd suggest with that getting a new piezo (about 10 Euros) and an end-pin jack and take the piezo straight to the jack and use an external preamp as an option, such as the Behringer ADI-21 which is cheap but a step up. You might be able to get a replacement preamp, though, but fitting one can be hit-or-miss.

My acoustic fretless bass (which was more expensive) still has an indifferent preamp but due to not finding one that would actually fit, I went the endpin route.

(Edit:I should note that the 'standard' action at the 12th fret low E is considered to be around 2.7 mm, apparently, but I am complaining that the fret work isn't perfect with it at 2 mm, so maybe I am just picky about low action - my basses all have actions of less than 2 mm and heading towards 1.5 mm except maybe the acoustic which I haven't measured in a while but is typically about 2 mm).

 

[parttime]

Hey there all. Thanks for the comments and insights! There were more fret less options but not that I could get locally for less than a bunch of money. I hadn’t seen the gear4 option before, but it’s too late! I got the cheapest acoustic bass I could find here, a j and d cutaway for around 130. Brought it home yesterday and went to town!

Out of the box the thing played horrible I have to admit. It has/had a major backbow and easing the truss off it got only slightly better. I probably should have let it sit for awhile but I got all impatient. So I dfrettted it last night and strung it up to sit for a few hours and look at things today. So far so good! That was a lot easier than I thought actually, and now I have a fretless acoustic for about 150 total! I ended up using cheap plastic cabinet liner as my filler material with superglue. It’s not perfect and I’m curious to see how it will hold up over time. But it seems like a nice cheap trick that could look great when I take the time to finish the neck proper. It’s dark and makes the lines only slightly visible. Oh, and I also added a strip of leds to the inside of the body, hahahahahaah, why not?

I’ll try to add some pics today and maybe a vid of how it sounds

 

[-Asdfgh-]

Hey there all. Thanks for the comments and insights! There were more fret less options but not that I could get locally for less than a bunch of money. I hadn’t seen the gear4 option before, but it’s too late! I got the cheapest acoustic bass I could find here, a j and d cutaway for around 130. Brought it home yesterday and went to town!

Out of the box the thing played horrible I have to admit. It has/had a major backbow and easing the truss off it got only slightly better. I probably should have let it sit for awhile but I got all impatient. So I dfrettted it last night and strung it up to sit for a few hours and look at things today. So far so good! That was a lot easier than I thought actually, and now I have a fretless acoustic for about 150 total! I ended up using cheap plastic cabinet liner as my filler material with superglue. It’s not perfect and I’m curious to see how it will hold up over time. But it seems like a nice cheap trick that could look great when I take the time to finish the neck proper. It’s dark and makes the lines only slightly visible. Oh, and I also added a strip of leds to the inside of the body, hahahahahaah, why not?

I’ll try to add some pics today and maybe a vid of how it sounds

If it's new then you may well have to sand the neck again due to differential expansion of the materials. If you do, get a very straight bar, glue on sandpaper, and straighten the neck first.

Also, if you are converting from fretted you probably want to lower the nut slots.

 

[parttime]

oh man, i love it!! got the action down in a decent spot and, yeah, i took both the nut and bridge down about a mm. i can still improve the slots a lot, but i'll do that sometime later. need to get some oil for the board as well. but for now, i'm gonna practice on a fretless acoustic for about 150 bucks!! and being this is the first fretless instrument ive ever played, any poor performance is on the part of the player....