Fretless conversion

[teb]

Hey Paul,
How big of a mess would I have to clean up if I pulled the frets out of my unvarnished 2030 fingerboard? It's one of those situations where the bass works great, but I'd get a lot more use out of it if it didn't have the frets. Do they usually come out fairly neatly or take a lot of small chips with them? I suppose I would have to do a lined fretless with some sort of epoxy/filler mix, which isn't a problem, though I'm not much more fond of fret lines than I am of frets, so they would be about as close as I can come to the bubinga color. It does have a bound neck. The side dots will be in the wrong place, but I can either move them or ignore them.

Ideally, I'd send the bass or the neck to one of you guys and have the fingerboard replaced with an un-fretted, un-lined, un-dotted one, but you folks tend to be rather booked-up solidly and I'm trying to go reasonably cheap.

[ajish4]

Hey Paul,
How big of a mess would I have to clean up if I pulled the frets out of my unvarnished 2030 fingerboard? It's one of those situations where the bass works great, but I'd get a lot more use out of it if it didn't have the frets. Do they usually come out fairly neatly or take a lot of small chips with them? I suppose I would have to do a lined fretless with some sort of epoxy/filler mix, which isn't a problem, though I'm not much more fond of fret lines than I am of frets, so they would be about as close as I can come to the bubinga color. It does have a bound neck. The side dots will be in the wrong place, but I can either move them or ignore them.

Ideally, I'd send the bass or the neck to one of you guys and have the fingerboard replaced with an un-fretted, un-lined, un-dotted one, but you folks tend to be rather booked-up solidly and I'm trying to go reasonably cheap.

Glad you posted this one Todd,

I'm thinking of doing the same on the 4004Cii if it has a sweet neck. I feel the same about the fret lines myself.

I have a Peavey T40 at my luthier currently having this very thing done. He is inserting small slivers of wood into the slots where the frets were, then sanding it smooth and using some kind of oil, no clear coat.

He said the cheapest way was to use some fingerboard sawdust of a sort, mixed with an epoxy, but he liked the idea of the wood better. He removed the dots, and the very sides of the neck will show the slightest bit of lighter color to mark out the frets. SO, they shouldn't show from the front. Once I get used to the neck, he said he can stain them to match the rest of the neck. He's only charging me $130.00, it is money well spent.

I would love to get an Ebony necked fretless one of these days, so we'll see where this goes....but I love the look of a totally clean fretless with no dots or lines too. If the 4004Cii really proves to be a long term keeper, that might be a possibility....

I'm so used to a RIC neck, I don't need the lines, but the T40 has a slightly different scale and I'm not as comfortable as when I'm playing the RIC. My 4003FL doesn't present a problem at all with fret markers. I just wanted something I can play a bit more aggressive and not worry about banging up my RIC.

Let us know how it all turns out!

[beatlefreak]

Hmm...Seems to me that this subject has come up before. You might want to search the forum, as I believe there were potential problems with filling the fret slots.

[jingle_jangle]

Yes, there are potential problems with filling the fret slots. Using a sawdust/epoxy mixture is likely to be the most stable, but remember that once you've soaked sawdust with epoxy, it darkens (on bubinga, it darkens a LOT) and you'd be then varnishing the 'board to get everything to match.

Most fillers will shrink, and even a little shrinkage will give you a hairline crack which could stay on one side of the fill or could cross over, cracking the filler, too.

The best fills I've seen use a strip of plastic or celluloid inserted into a cleaned-up fret slot. This, of course, means either a white or black line where the frets were, because nobody extrudes bubinga-colored plastic sheet.

Bear in mind, Todd and Tony both, that ebony is dense, quite oily, and if you do have an ebony board done, conversion varnish will not hold up well on a fretless, as the varnish will tend to separate from the board due to string pressure and abrasion. It's OK on a fretted; the frets take the beating in this case.

I think the best solution if you don't want to wait to get a new board done, is to use the black plastic or celluloid, and you know where to get it.

[teb]

On this one, I know I don't want a varnished fingerboard. It makes a pretty drastic difference in the sound. If I want that type of sound, I just play the Pedulla, which has some sort of polyester on ebony for the board. It seems to hold up pretty well, depending on how much you use rounds on it. I'll put them on occasionally if I want that specific twangy sound, but most of the time I use tape-wound flats on it. My last Pedulla was an '85 and the board's coating was still in nice shape after all these years from using tape-wound strings. My old Frankenstein Gibson has unvarnished ebony and I think the available tones generated by the unvarnished boards are much more versatile, so that's what I would be shooting for with the 2030. My main concern is more one of just how much chipping there is at the slots and how much clean-up is needed when you pull the frets out? Taking a pair of vice grips to a perfectly good Rickenbacker is not something that I'd really look forward to.

[johnallg]

Todd, wouldn't you want to use something like this?
http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Fretting_su ... uller.html

[jingle_jangle]

I neglected to address your chipping concerns in my initial response; apologies.

I've found that chipping is a highly individual issue...some fretboards chip like a nightmare (always repairable); others pull nice and clean with no problems. You'll know with the first fret how much moisture is left in the wood--it's the old, dry ones that are worst.

The best insurance is to use pullers like John linked to--they must be SMALL and SHARP--and a soldering iron, usually about a 60 watter is good. A 40 takes a very long time to heat each fret.

You apply the iron to one end of the fret, and locate the pullers just "inside" of where you place the iron. Bite down on the fret and carefully rock the pullers back and forth in tiny increments. The rocking direction is in the same direction as the fret itself; i.e., across the neck. The fret will begin to come up. Carefully work the pullers toward the center, 1/8" or so at a time, continually rocking a tiny bit at a time. The fret will ease out bit by bit. The last 1/4" is usually where the chips happen; you have to rock the pullers and at the very end of the fret, rotate the pullers and the fret out of the slot toward you in one smooth motion. Pulling vertically will wreck the board, rotating away from you will pull up chips often enough.

The purpose of the heat is to "boil" out grunge. It seems also to soften the wood around the fret somewhat for an easier pull.

If a chip does come loose, save it and glue it back into place with gap-filling super glue. I use pinpoint tweezers or the tip of a very sharp Exacto blade to impale the chip to carry it back to its home. Let it sit, even though it may not be perfectly level, until the glue has set up and sand flush once the entire board is fret-free. It's important to reglue chips as they happen, not wait and do them all at once, unless you like drawing tiny maps and working without breathing, lest a tiny chip end up on the floor, or, worse yet, imbedded inside one of your nostrils...

[beatlefreak]

Yeah - No snortin' the chips!

[woodyng]

as a total aside to all this....that is a beautiful pedulla ya got there,todd!

[woodyng]

oh and the bass is nice too........

[teb]

That's the problem with these new fancy computers with built-in webcams. If you surf the web wearing a kilt, people can see your Pedulla. It's a nice bass and plays really well, but the sound tends to be so distinctive that it really doesn't fit on a lot of the music that I seem to play, so it doesn't get an awful lot of use. Lately, I've been using the old Gibson, the 2030 and the Hofner a lot more. I'm really enjoying the Hofner and I guess I'm getting old and feeble because it's the first one I reach for on the wall - mostly because it's so light! I bought it used in mint condition and hadn't played one in decades. It came with these big, sort of half-circle, ivory-looking fret markers on the up-side of the neck which were really easy to see in dim light and I really liked them and decided that they were a substantial improvement over most. About three weeks later, one of them came off and stuck to my hand. They were tape, put on by the previous owner.....

[jps]

The '07 500/1V63 I bought recently is getting a lot of time in my hands; must have something to do with the sound and that weight, or, lack, thereof!

[aceonbass]

I had my 4004CiiMG converted to fretless. The frets were pulled and replaced with strips of ABS cut on the same radius as the fingerboard. After the strips were glued in, a very thin, water-like epoxy was brushed on the un-finished board until it soaked in no longer. The fingerboard was then skimmed to perfection. The sound is exactly what I was looking for, especially with the 4002/LK three pickup configuration I've gone with.

[ken_j]

If you adjust the truss rods so there is a back bow it will open the fret slots a bit to help with the removal. Have you considered using a router to remove the fretboard so you can replace it?

[aceonbass]

I wanted the lines since I'd always had frets anyway, but if I wanted a new board, I'd shave it off with a plane.