NBD - Cliff Bordwell fretless 5 (trigger warning: coffee table bass content)

[lordradish]

This showed up yesterday, from Cilff Bordwell, my third instrument from him. He designed me a fretless 6 a few yeas ago that just had the perfect tone, so I needed a 5 with something similar. My other fretless 5 is a 2025 Stingray Special 5HH... Great bass, but still not quite my holy grail tone. Cliff does amazing work and is so great to deal with.

Spanish Cedar body, Katalox fingerboard with Luminlay, heavily spalted maple top, 3 piece maple neck, Nordstrand Big Blademan pickups with Nordy 4 band pre. It sounds a tad different than my 6 but still in the ballpark of the tone I was chasing. I had him do the neck like my Stingrays, so when I picked it up, it felt like I already knew it.

Less than 9 pounds, too.

 

[bholder]

 

[JonathanPDX]

Wow, beautiful! Congrats!

 

[Bob_Ross]

Beautiful bass!
What's the nut made of?

 

[lordradish]

Beautiful bass!
What's the nut made of?

Dymondwood

 

[Hotblack]

Now that you've lived with it for a little bit, what are your thoughts?
How are you liking the blades?
That fingerboard is truly drool-worthy.

 

[LowWay]

Totally gorgeous!

 

[lordradish]

Now that you've lived with it for a little bit, what are your thoughts?
How are you liking the blades?
That fingerboard is truly drool-worthy.

I had the first gig with it tonight. I effin' love it.

One thing that made a big difference is I had him spec the neck to a modern 5 string Stingray Special. Since that's what I've been playing for the last year and a half, it felt like I didn't need to adjust anything.

Regarding the Big Blademan... I have them in the fretless 6 Cliff built me a few years ago, but they are the soap bars.What's interesting is I think the MM config, which is what I have here, is a very different beast. The two coils are further apart on them. It just feels a bit more present. Another thing is Cliff went with Wal pickup spacing instead of MM. My main 5 fretted has always been a Wal, and I do think the Wal fretless tone is my favorite, so he surprised me when he did this. We hadn't really discussed pickup spacing, so he just went with this.

It makes the neck pickup a bit bassier, similar to the Wal. Really good for reggae and dub.

It's taken me a a while to figure out how I like the electronics. They sound great in series but sometimes I will tame the neck one and put it in parallel when I'm mostly using the bridge.

I play around with the single coil settings sometimes but I am so conditioned to big humbuckers that it always feels a bit less than I want.

I am also so blown away by that top and fingerboard

Definitely my favorite of the three builds.