This is one of those projects that kept growing..
I bought the Chevy green sterling body cuz it was cheap.. had a old olp neck but.. it was a bit bigger than the neck pocket.. this lead to two thoughts.. one.. I’m tired of fitting necks to bodies.. two.. this meant sterling got the us str5 neck shape right.. and dude also had the neck so I bought it..
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was going to use old olp bridge and pickup but.. so I get the neck.. the frets did look seated very well… and I’d wanted a fretless 5er.. so I did a test pull and the fret came right out.. I had them all out in 20minutes..
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this was cool! So I went looking for a better bridge… and pickup.. and preamp..
today the fret slots were filled.. this a messy and annoying job.. but they are all in
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qersty wrote: ↑Fri May 23, 2025 4:05 am
I love the look of fretless maple boards. tho mostly the heavily vintage laquerd ones
Me too! They also sound cool. I have a 74 rickenbacker 4001 and while it’s a rosewood board the coating is a a blast to play.. plan it to coat the board in superglue.
dubkitty wrote: ↑Fri May 23, 2025 6:01 am
what wood are you using for the fills?
Bubinga, I got a huge multi pack of veneer and that piece fit the slots the best
Got off work early yesterday.. did some fingerboard leveling and 7 coats of superglue
Today doing spot filling on the dots.. why? Because Sterling did not install thin where when you level the board they match the board curvature… I assume it’s to save production time.. but for me it’s annoying…
Fingerboard is done… I hate sanding ca glue!!!!! Now I know why it’s almost been 20 years since the last time I did this.. (that was a double bass fingerboard I carved out of Pau ferro, the finish is still intact… think it was 13 coats) anyway used a whole bottle of hot stuff.. sanded to 2500 grit..
Now.. waiting on a neck plate (the one from china was a rectangle.. musicman neck plats are a trapezoid… oh well I’ll use it for something else… then need to install the new hipshot ultralight tuners, drill the body for the new bridge and wire it..
having recently dealt with sanding small applications of CA, i feel your pain. the idea of doing 13 coats and then sanding (or did you have to sand after every coat? yikes!) a bass fingerboard gives me The Fear. i guess it's just about optimal for a fretless bass, though. especially if you're using roundwound strings.
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
FIFTY YEARS OF SCARING THE CHILDREN 1970-2020--and i'm not done yet
I’m sure it’s overkill.. I don’t use roundwounds very much… yes I sanded or at least scuffed between all the coats..
The reasons why: cheap neck, don’t trust fingerboard’s hardness. And the harder and smoover you get the surface the cleaner your notes and more importantly harmonics are. For sound/playability if I was going to build a neck I’d use ebony or something stabilize..
And going off the two fret-less basses I own.. both with rosewood fingerboards my rickenbacker with a lacquered board is for me “better” than my pj with a lined oiled board.
i guess i've been fortunate in that both of the fretless basses i've played--a fabulous early 60's sunburst Jazz Bass owned by the Music Department of City College of SF where i learned bass by volunteering when we had 7 guitarists and no bass in the Jazz Improvisation Workshop class, and my MIM Jazz Bass which i think is late 90s/early 00s is from 2004--had nice dense rosewood boards.
god, that college bass was magnificent. they had a vintage Bassman with the enormous cab with multiple 15s as well. when the instructor said "would one of you guys please play the bass?" i realized this was my golden opportunity to, as they say, learn to play bass like a bass player instead of like a guitarist playing bass. after a semester of that i could actually call myself a bassist.
occasionally i'm tempted to buy a sunburst JB body and make my bass as much like the CCSF bass as possible, but that'd be kind of a wank. i did accessorize it like the college bass, though...it came with a Badass bridge i replaced with a vintage style unit, i changed the pickguard to tortoise, and i added the thumb rest and pickup/bridge covers. i had to have the thumb rest because that's how i learned, and with the covers i found that, as usual, Leo and the guys knew what they were doing...those covers do a number on RF interference.
Last edited by dubkitty on Thu May 29, 2025 12:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
FIFTY YEARS OF SCARING THE CHILDREN 1970-2020--and i'm not done yet
They also help do the Lemmy thing
My pj (it’s a Frankenstein I got in el cerrito in 97.. it’s a sunburst 1969 precision body that was pj-ed with a Chandler fretless jazz neck) is a cool bass but it’s lined and you can almost hear/feel the lines.. I’ve thought of reworking it but.. I also think about putting a different neck on it…
Anyway…
Filled the old tuner screw holes and cut some veneer strips to use as spacers to go around the tuner bushings on the new hipshot tuners so there is no slop.. these fucking cheap bass tuners these companies are using… the G&L neck I just used on my other project the holes were too small.. yet the us made versions of both musicman and G&L use the same tuner….
Ok, powered through and am done. Totally done.
Installed the better musicman accurate bridge, and wired it up. Pickup is a nordstrand mm2.5 with a bob’s fun stuff 70’s accurate preamp. I also wired in a series/parallel switch
Strings are ernieball cobalt flats.
Had to add a .5 degree shim get the action right.
Plays like budda, sounds like a… stingray..
