NBD: Sandblasted Fretless Frankenfender

Here's something you don't see every day.

Take a Fender sandblasted P in Crimson Red, jettison the neck and electronics, add a new wenge/wenge Warmoth tele neck (looks like it's carved out of chocolate), chrome Schallers, copper foil shielding, a brand new EMG Geezer pup with harness, new pickguard, and a set of TI Jazz Flats... you get something that sounds eerily like an upright bass. (Even more than my Warwick Triumph EUB - wasn't expecting that.)

Thick warm tone and articulate mids, with blooming mwah for days. My Ampeg PF-50T makes it sound like a living thing. Plays like butter. And surprisingly, it loves pedals! I plugged into a Chunk Brown Dog set to a crunchy synth fuzz, into an EBS Clarke Wah, and it made me lose all sense of time for about twenty minutes... I think. I love this thing. Worth the four-week wait for the neck.

I may swap out the bent-metal bridge for a Fender HMV, and drop in some Strap-Loks, but otherwise it looks like I've created a monster!

 

Ask and ye shall receive! And a closeup of the grain on the fingerboard, because wenge.

 

Also they only made them with maple fingerboards. Never understood that - both the red and blue look so awesome with a dark board.

 

I am definitely more comfortable on fretted necks, but there's something about a good fretless. I am more groove-oriented on a fretted, more melodic/vocal on a fretless.

With my separation and impending divorce, I am downsizing my stable drastically, to a good fretted P (my Moollon), a good dual-J type (a golden age Warwick Thumb 4 NT) and this will be my fretless. I figure I may as well make it the way I want it, right?

 

I hear you. I tried a tort guard, an aged white pearl, a vintage mint, a parchment, and this one. It's a P-bass after all, so I wanted to love the tort, but it was too dark - the white/black/white provided the best contrast to set everything off and show off the grain of the ash and the wenge. Also the tort didn't have holes for the pup cover. The white pearl was my second favorite. My GAS/OCD is strong - that's 13 screws, two pots and an output jack x 5 just to choose my favorite piece of plastic.

 

I should be able to throw some down tomorrow.