My 4th or 5th bass back in 1975 was a long scale Alembic Series I. I believe it was S/N 189. Beautiful instrument and somewhat unusual in that the core was koa, which I had never heard of. I sold my car to buy it. Anyhow, I was playing a lot of upright at the time, both Jazz and Orchestral, and I decided to have the frets pulled and filled. Jaco was on the scene; and while I greatly admired his playing, the thing back then was to do things your own way. So, I kept the ebony fingerboard bare and strung the bass with D'Addario half rounds. And that is the way I played it as my only bass guitar for the next 12 years.
In roughly 1988, I started playing as house bass player for a Blues open mic thing; and decided to put the Alembic back to fretted and bought a 1972 Jazz (don't ask how much) and a fretless Warmoth neck with no lines and an ebony board; and magnificent birds eye figuring. I put that Warmoth neck on the Jazz and got busy with the Blues. I was still avoiding the finish on the fingerboard, because I was still dead set on not copying Jaco. And, I thought the lack of lines looked pretty imposing. I played that bass at that gig for about 3 years. People like Larry McCray would stop in, and we had a heck of a great time. I learned a lot. One of the things I learned was that the side dots are perfectly adequate references in the lower positions where you do most of your playing and where you can't see the fingerboard anyhow. But, intonation on the odd bass break up in the upper register with big shifts can be challenging with no reference points on the board. Also, after a couple of years with the round wounds, that fingerboard became rutted, and intonation in the lower Blues keys became blurry.
This led me to spec and purchase a fretless Thunderbass 5 from Mike Pedulla. I picked out the top at the shop south of Boston and had the bass built with the polyester finish on the board and fret lines to help playing in the upper register. By this point, I had decided that fingerboard finishes and fret lines were practical, and I had gotten too old to care whether or not I was copying anyone. That was a great bass, except I didn't really dig the Thunderguts version of the Bartolini pre. I gigged that bass for a couple of years in a Letterman Band type of thing. Ultimately, I found an upright that I needed, and decided to sell that bass to pay for the upright. But after a few days I had sellers remorse and went to go get it back from the store where it was on consignment. Unfortunately, it had been sold 15 minutes before I got there. TB'er Michelle ended up with the bass, and I don't know where it went after she sold it.
So, then I picked up a Fernandez 5 that played pretty well. It had a blank ebony fingerboard. I coated that with floor grade polyurethane, which sounded warmer than the polyester; and when it was sanded down, the matte finish looked like nothing was on the board at all. That's the best fingerboard finish I ever played. Very durable. Really warm singing tone. Don't recall why I sold that bass. It was purple. The cat who bought it loved it to death. Don't blame him.
These days I am playing a Zon Sonus Special 5. It has very tastefully dark lines and the phenolic board. It came from TB'er Gard. The only issue for me with this instrument is that the line material is so dark that the reference points on the fingerboard edge in the lower positions are a little tough to see in low stage light. Otherwise, it's a sufficiently great player that I doubt I will look elsewhere.
Those are my adventures and where I have ended up.
