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Do Fretless Exist without a Burst Finish?

#23
Here's my boomer finish, being played by a non-booming shoegazer.



img00016-20100103-1553-jpg.1563216
 
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#30
lyralain said:
Do fretless basses with actually fun, vibrant finishes, or natural finishes over really characterful wood, exist? Especially do they exist under $1k?
Click to expand...

They do. And way under your stated budget, too. You just have to make it really clear to the search engine what you are looking for or else it gets confused (as the internet is a Boomer itself, after all...)
 
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#31
lyralain said:
Problem is, almost all of the fretless basses I can find are 'sunburst' this and 'brown burst' that.
Click to expand...

Boomer here. I'm 100% with you about the boring choices in fretless. I think there are two main reasons, and neither has to do with age:

1) I think the manufacturers are targeting orchestral string players for crossover into electric bass. The brown/brown-burst finishes and dark fingerboards are meant to lower the conversion stress. The Portamento, for example, has that look.

2) Jaco's "Bass of Doom" was a sunrise burst.

I've got a lovely five string Carvin (old name for Kessel) with an unlined ebony fingerboard and a brown-burst over curly maple top that I picked up for $850. If I thought it would turn out right I would have it refinished in a translucent green or blue, but I don't have the kind of money needed to make sure it turns out right so I'm living with the brown.

I have a lined Mexican jazz bass in... wait for it... brown burst. I like the neck. I'm not thrilled about the pickups, and am really bored with the finish. If I can find a decent Mexican jazz body with good pups that isn't brown burst I'll do the swap. This one is a workhorse for me. Cost me $450 some time in the '00s.

In the shop downstairs I have a cream white body Harley Benton PJ bass that is getting a fretless purpleheart fingerboard mod. I got it for $150 with a cheap fret-pull job that went bad. The project is not high on my list of honey-dos, so who knows when it will be finished, but the plan is to install fiber-optic light-up spots at the fret positions that are individually controlled by a raspberry pi computer in the upper horn. It's an interesting hobby project and - if it works - it should be a fun teaching machine. The sound isn't half-bad either.

If you're willing to butcher a perfectly good bass with a fret-pull the HB is a good choice. Budget for a new fingerboard, though. The wood they use for the fretboards is a soft pine dyed black. The prior owner tried to harden it up with CA glue but it set too fast and went cloudy.
 
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#36
No Compute said:
They do. And way under your stated budget, too. You just have to make it really clear to the search engine what you are looking for or else it gets confused (as the internet is a Boomer itself, after all...)
Click to expand...

lyralain said:
this has actually been a great help as I've always wanted a Starr Labs Ztar but they're egregiously costly. If I slap a microcontroller in this though...
Click to expand...

I'm glad I kept reading through the thread for this little bit of fun.
 
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