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Defretting a bass

#21
Looks great! Great outcome! Did you sand down/lower the nut as well? You might want to lower the nut as much as fret height for better intonation, since the frets are gone now.

BTW: Putting on a layer of epoxy isn´t that tricky... it was one evening spent. Of course you need a sanding block with the right radius. It´s not perfect but fretboard wear is not an issue anymore...
 

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#23
Hi,

I didn't sand the nut, no... I sanded the neck quite a bit before lacquer though. It's got 4/5 coats and was baked for 45 minutes between each coat and a good hour before any coats to drive out moisture. The finish isn't as mirror like as glass, but it's very hard, so that's good.

There's quite a bit of buzz now, where the string is vibrating against the fretboard not far past my finger, does that mean I need to adjust the bridge, raise string height?
 
#24
I had to bring down the nut a fair bit, along with the saddles. Additionally the intonation needed some slight adjustment.

Try this first, as you pluck a string, pinch down that sting behind the nut and see if this reduces or eliminates the buzz; if so then this is a good indication that the nut will need to be reworked. Note: there are times when changing to different strings will require some nut adjustment.

Good luck.
 
#25
polyrhythmia said:
I just bought a defretted Steinberger Spirit: 5-string, fretless, and headless. Once you start playing fretless, you might not want to go back. Been thinking about defretting the other bass, but still scared to try it. Still need to figure out what, if anything, to put on the rosewood fingerboard. There is some small damage from the roundwound strings it came with. Epoxy is supposed to be good, but something you don't have to mix would be easier to deal with.
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There’s truth in what you said. I had just been playing a couple of years and picked up a Fender fretless at GC and the feeling was like going from manual steering to power steering (anybody under 40 probably won’t know what I am referring too) (Think cars). At that point I was hooked Fretless is my preference.
 
#27
You guys are pushing me to get a cheap used bass and try my luck defretting it. I actually picked up a fretless Fender at my bass class, and despite the challenge (which is good, in many ways) of playing in tune, I kinda loved it. Very easy to play with (no buzzing) and sounds very different. Not to mention the extremely smooth glissandos you can do on a fretless.
 
#28
iCONICA said:
Hi,

There's a similar thread, I know, but my situation is far too different, so a new thread is needed.

I have just bought a nice new Tobias bass, so my old cheap crappy "Encore" p-bass copy is completely redundant.

I thought, as I've never played a fret-less bass, could I just pry out the frets, fill in the space with hard wood filler, smooth over with fine car bodywork finishing sand paper (800, 1200, 1500 grit) and play away? Surely that'd work? To at least give me something to play with to see what fret-less is like...

My only question, raised by that other thread, is would the strings damage the fretboard wood?

I read this page http://www.woodwiz.com/epoxy/ , and the result in that page looks lovely! It's got the old fret grooves to mark the notes for a beginner too, but that seems far to advanced to get a that kind of finish for me, so I was hoping to just fill in the frets and leave it bare wood.

Thanks, :D
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Yeah, that's Thor, who does super super professional epoxy jobs. So don't even think about ending up with something like that if you DIY.

I've done several defret jobs (until I discovered Carvin a while back and now I don't ever have to do them again) and I'd say the most important tool to have will be a good radius block. Do NOT attempt it with just a sanding block from the hardware store, you will absolutely grind that entire fingerboard off of there trying to get it right :).

They're pricey, so you have to weight that in to whether it's worth it or to just put the funds towards a factory FL bass. You MUST get a good one:

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For all the rest of doing a DIY defret, there's loads of good info here and on the 'net for doing it, but a good radius block is absolutely mandatory....

As for the wood and if the strings will damage it, they will eventually depending on the type of wood. If it's rosewood, roundwounds will eventually wear little channels in the board. If it's ebony, you almost don't need to worry about it - it'll last forever.

LS
 
#32
Another option I tried was to file down the frets flush to the board. This did not work out well because I could not get the buzzing completely out. As I compensated for one buzz spot I caused another. I ended up pulling the frets out and found out I screwed up the board beyond sanding.
 

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