Learning fretless; fretlines or not?

[Slevage]

No

Side dots---Yes

 

[joebar]

you never hear anyone dissing a guitarist doing slide on a fretted guitar;
nobody says, `he`s a wuss for having frets`
think about it

 

[BawanaRik]

While actually playing a fretless may be pushing the definition I have one.

I think the sissy lines are a good idea. I'll bet everyone get's lost once. They make it easier to get back.

 

[GypsyMan]

I have the Squier VM Fretless Jazz. Damn good for the money... has lines though.

Same here. Excellent BASS, and I love the fact that it's marked. I was thinking of going DB and I would want that marked also for learning.

 

[Clef_de_fa]

With line : Jaco, Mark Egan, Bunny Brunel, Marcus Miller, Jeff Schmidt, Alain Caron, Gary Willis

Without line : Steve Bailey, Micheal Manring, Pino Palladino, Sting, Jack Bruce




So I think, lines are ok if you like them

 

[bob atherton]

whatever you feel comfortable with...in the threads i've sifted through on the topic, it seems to polarize into 2 main camps, each having reasonable points

personally, dots on the side of the fretboard are my preference, with no lines...i can't really see the fretboard when playing anyway, just the side

I agree . I used to have a FL Rickenbacker 4001 with plain board but dots at the fret points. I was gigging with it after about 10 hrs practice.

 

[bob atherton]

Dots on a fretless are not necessarily the same as dots on a fretted bass. The side dots on my unlined fretless (Steinberger Synapse) are positioned where the fretlines would be; there is a dot for each of the missing 24 fretlines.

Yep, my Rickenbacker FL 4001 had dots at the fret points.

 

[kevteop]

I think if you practise regularly you should be fine without lines, but if you don't always get time to practise or if only a small proportion of your playing is fretless then a lined bass would be a big help.

Being able to hear yourself properly on stage is more important than being able to see where the notes are.

 

[gumbynotpokey]

PS: No one intonates by ear. They intonate by muscle memory. If you are relying on your ear to let you know when you hit a wrong note, then you've already lost the game. Your ear can only hear notes that've already been played. IOW, everyone else can hear that sour note also.

Hooray. +1

In looking for my first fretless I found the input that it's best to get a fretless version of your current bass. I did that. I had played that one and only for about 8 years at that time, and the muscle memory helped a ton. I got no lines/no dots. It was great.

My next fretless will not be the same make/model and I now have the experience on fretless to make THAT jump effectively, by comparison.

 

[henry2513]

If you don't have perfect pitch how do you know whether you are sharp or flat? lol. Without lines you're always subject to how good your pitch is.

Yeah there are side dots but you're not always going to be perfectly aligned. It's more important, for me at least, to be in pitch than it is to "look good".

 

[de Kyme]

My first bass, back in the early '70's was an excretable lump of laminated plywood covered in metallic vinyl. On most fret boards the frets get closer together as you go up the neck. On this one around about the 13th fret the gap widened instead of getting closer. Even as a complete newbie I realised this was wrong so I popped off the frets and played it for a couple of years without even filling the gaps. As long as I didn't go past about the 12th fret I got along ok using the fret slots and position dots to navigate.

Now that I had started down the fretless road I next acquired an Ibanez fretless P bass. This had inlaid fret position markers for each fret along the edge of the fingerboard and extending under the E string. I found it a bit visually too busy with the white fret markers against the dark fingerboard at every fret position. In 1975 I got my 1970 Fender Fretless P. This has just position dots on the edge of the neck at the fret position in the usual place ie 3rd 5th 7th 9th 12th etc. I get on very well with this arrangement.

As an aside I know that people have an interest in the "lawsuit" era Japanese guitars. I had the original and the copy together for a short while, and though the Ibanez was a very good, solid instrument there wasn't really any comparison with the genuine article, even if by 1970 Fender had begun its post CBS decline. Having said that, if I could track that old Ibanez down I would try and get it back!

A while back I bought an acoustic bass guitar with a bound neck with position markers on the edge in the 'tween frets space ie the same as a fretted bass. This was very confusing so I have painted over the binding with brown paint to match the fingerboard and made new, discrete, markers by scraping a small dot of paint away at the fret position for the usual 3rd, 5th 7th fret etc.

I also put some sticky labels through a hole punch and used the little round chits to make position markers for the double bass I am renting from our community orchestra. I don't use these for classical as I play seated with the neck going over my shoulder and eyes on the music and the conductor, but for standing and playing jazz and blues it makes it very easy to apply bass guitar patterns. I know this is cheating but I have come to DB late and maybe don't have the time or patience to learn it proper.

Cheers from Tasmania

 

[BassyBill]

I think it's safe to assume the OP has made his choice already, seeing how this thread is five years old. So, closed.