I guess it will have one interesting "plus" in that it'll screw with people's minds when they see you playing a fretted bass and doing fretless slides with lots of mwah and can't figure out how you do it.
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Fretted Fretless
- Thread starter Scoops
- Start date
Coming back to this thread, I'm realizing he could take the same amount of wood off the back of the neck and end up with a neck that's more or less the same as what he started with except with the frets under glass. That would be cool.
Crazy thick? No more like @.01 thicker than it's original thickness...so what's that .011% thicker? Easily make that up by shaving that off the back of the neck.
So what are you predicting the weight gains is going to be 2 to 3 oz? I don't call that crazy. Ultralite tuners on and it'll be lighter than the original with the tuners.
So as this progresses, and I need to remind people this is an experiment, I could add scalloping to this to make it a scalloped fretless
The original Ibanez Ashula bass was a 6 string bass with the first 4 strings fretted tuned E A D G and the next 2 strings were fretless and tuned D G. It was strange for sure. A friend of mine (who's not a "bass player") bought one a couple of year ago and converted it to standard B-C 6 string tuning.
Go for it brotha!!!
Go for it brotha!!!
Here I thought you were making frets that sat below the fingerboard. Turn the screws on a couple of cams and they raise up.
Don't give me that look, I'm not a builder.
That is novel out of the box thinking.
I truly like that!
Experimenting is fine and trying stuff is how we learn. Frequently we learn why nobody else does it that way -- and sometimes you strike gold.So as this progresses, and I need to remind people this is an experiment, I could add scalloping to this to make it a scalloped fretless
But I can't think of anything useful you could accomplish by scalloping it.
Can you follow this up with epoxying a pair of tube socks so they can be worn as shoes?
Paul.Why did Les Paul put a big plank of wood in a perfectly good guitar?
Why did Mr Tutmarc electrify a Bass
Why did Edison make the light bulb?
Why did man become a hunter?
Tutmarc.
Edison.
Scoops.
All of my basses are fretless. Some of them have frets but they're fretless in the spaces. If you added up all the frets times the width that would only be about an inch or so, statistically speaking, fretless. Worst case, the frets are only 2-3% of the total neck so you can dismiss them in rounding.
This will be the greatest thing since sliced bread. If you don't like sliced bread, you can always epoxy it back together.
It's not a real fretless unless there are little plastic fish swimming around in the epoxy.
You have been very defensive about some very benign comments throughout this thread, and what you are saying just doesn't make sense.
The frets are likely around .1" tall or more (.11" if they are jumbo frets, .106" for medium jumbo, .102" for vintage jumbo, etc.), and the epoxy layer will have to be at least.025" thicker than that to sufficiently cover the frets. So, how do you arrive at "@.01 thicker than it's original thickness"? It will be more like .125" thicker.
A standard profile neck is about .875" deep at first position, so an unfretted/defretted neck would be .875" thick and the epoxy covered fretted neck will be about 1" thick. That more than a 14% increase. So, how do you possibly arrive at ".011% thicker"?
As noted above, the layer of epoxy will be about .125" thick. The width of a standard neck probably averages more than 2" over it's entire length, which is going to be around 24" for a 21 fret neck. I'm pretty sure that a .125" x 2" x 24" slab of epoxy will weigh more than a couple of ounces.
In any case, I'm moving on. I was curious to see how this would turn out, but not curious enough to make it worth the unpleasant attitude. Best of luck.
And people think isolation because of a pandemic doesn't have negative consequences. Ha, shows them.
I think the layers will separate in a few years as the metal frets expand and contract with temperature.
I think the layers will separate in a few years as the metal frets expand and contract with temperature.
Sciency Stuff is good. The worst case scenario is a cheap ruined neck, wouldn't be the first one. I once installed 2 Estes rocket engines in my Revell model of the German ME262, convinced it would fly. Instead, only one engine ignited, transforming it into a whirling Helicopter Blade of Death. This was very exciting Science, and I still have a small scar to prove it. If this experiment produces no scars, it will have been objectively more successful, insofar as no blood was produced.
I'm game for a non-judgemental watch that cost me nothing. 
Do what you do.
Do what you do.
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