Help me understand my possible fretless conversion

[Richard_P_Harve]

I'm really close to buying a beautiful Jerzy Drozd Legend 5 string that is currently a fretted bass with an extended 36 fret fret board. This bass would be a killer fretless but I just realized that if I have a luthier remove the fret wire and fill the slots the side dots are not going to be in the right place. So what looked like a simple conversion not looks to be a complete fret board replacement. I reached out to Luthier Access Group as they were the company that originally sold the bass AND they are knowledgeable on JD basses but I have not heard back. What do you guys think, is this a big and expensive job...? I have no experience with this type of thing so thanks for your thoughts.

 

[Nev375]

Why not just buy a new jerzy drozd fretless?

 

[Flaked Beans]

Yes, it's quite big and expensive job but....
the luthier can remove the old dots and put new dots straight over (above) the fretlines, all of them . Otherwise just buy a new JD fretless bass.

 

[maestrovert]

Check out HG Thor, just be aware that there's a waiting list:

HG Thor Epoxy Fretless

 

[bassbenj]

I'm really close to buying a beautiful Jerzy Drozd Legend 5 string that is currently a fretted bass with an extended 36 fret fret board. This bass would be a killer fretless but I just realized that if I have a luthier remove the fret wire and fill the slots the side dots are not going to be in the right place. So what looked like a simple conversion not looks to be a complete fret board replacement. I reached out to Luthier Access Group as they were the company that originally sold the bass AND they are knowledgeable on JD basses but I have not heard back. What do you guys think, is this a big and expensive job...? I have no experience with this type of thing so thanks for your thoughts.

I have one lined fretless bass (early Carvin AC50) with markers in the fretted positions. Quite frankly it tends to drive me nuts, but it's not absolutely horrible because the ends of the fretlines are visible from the side and that helps a lot.

So my opinion would be that so long as the fretlines are filled with a contrasting wood that is fairly visible, the fretted markers wouldn't be too huge a problem. If fretlines were designed to blend in to the fingerboard and/or not readily visible from the side of the neck, then I'd fork out for installing standard fretless markers in some way. (one of those stick-on LED strips might be an option)