My Squier fretless conversion

This will be my "training" fretless. I started converting it last night and finished up just a little while ago. Pulled all the frets and inlaid walnut strips in the fret slots, smoothed it down, oiled the fb with lemon oil, lowered the nut and bridge saddles. The walnut is a little bit contrasting in color, just enough to help me out a bit by seeing where the frets were. This is my first foray into fretless. I've already started working up my first song.

Pretty cool, I think. Sorry for the bad quality pic.

 

53 hits, not a single reply? Didn't think it was that uninteresting.

 

I like fretless. It'll take a while to get good at it, but I was playing several songs I already know on it and playing them OK, in pretty good tune. It should work well for certain songs.

The bass is Shoreline Gold, although it looks kind of pinkish on my monitor (bad pic). I'm not crazy about the cream color on the Dimarzio pup, but its the only color I had at the time. The J pup in it is microphonic junk, some kind of generic pup, probably not as good as a Squier J pup. I don't even use it. Need a better J pup.

You see, I found this bass in a pawn shop, and it had Alembic pickups in it believe it or not! Someone installed some very expensive Alembics in it, but the pickups needed a preamp and the previous owner didn't install one, and they didn't have much output on their own. So I bought it, sold the pups for more than I paid for the bass, then put these pups in it. The Dimarzio is good at least.

 

I didn't care about the Alembic pickups. I just wanted to sell them, make a profit and have a free bass. I think I paid $115 for the bass, sold the pickups for $170-something, and had a free Squier (sans pups). The Alembic pups would have been worth a lot more, but they were less than mint cosmetically, the wires were clipped shorter than stock, and had no pre to go with them.

I just used a thin knife blade and gently pried the frets out. I did lift some tiny chips, but the ones I couldn't reglue I just filled. Its not very noticeable. I have a bunch of very thin walnut veneer that I've had for years. I just cut me some little strips off it. Almost perfect thickness, but I had to scrape a micro millimeter off the thickness, then the strips fit into the fret slots just right, a snug press fit. I used Titebond to glue the strips in, then trimmed with a sharp knife, then sanded flush and smooth.