What did David J use a fretless on?
Yeah forgot about Japan/Sylvian - thats a good callout.
Talk Talk were all over the place.
Q: What is your dream bass?
David: The one I own! 1972 fretless P bass. Iāve had it since 1994. Itās the best bass Iāve ever had. Itās a dream to play; itās got a lot of soul. I believe instruments resonate with the experiences theyāve had. All the music thatās been played with them, the experiences, just being heldā instruments have a soul and I felt very connected to this one as soon as I picked it up. I havenāt got that many, but thatās my baby.
SLIS: And I had some of my readers submit requests for some questions for you, and the first one was when did you decide to play a fretless bass?
DAVID J: Really early on, pre-Bauhaus actually. It was the late 70ās and I wanted to play bass and prior to that I had a really cheap 6-string electric guitar, and I took the top two strings off and I used that as my bass. So I was trying to buy a proper bass and I saw this fretless Fender P on the wall in this music store and I loved the look of it.
David J with his fretless Fender P.
Thatās what attracted me to it, and I picked it up and everyone was saying, āYou canāt play that! Itās really hard, yāknow, thereās no frets!ā (laughing) But I just immediately took to it and I loved the feel of it, and so Iāve been playing it ever since.
SLIS: Yeah, I was wondering how hard that would be to master, just remembering where to put your fingers, I would imagine that being really challenging.
DAVID J: Well yes, it is, but I just loved the tone, and you just sort of get the notes in-between the notes if you know what I mean? But sometimes thatās not always a good thing.
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Itās not just Paul Young. Itās Pino. Heās like one of the gods.
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95% of the Fretless bassists I admire play it like fretted bass including the Man himself. Thatās how they all play 95% of the time.
That said the 5% is what make things so spicy 
Listen to Gary Willis you can go through half the album before you realize that heās playing a Fretless bass.
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Something isnāt jiving here. Did he buy his fretless in 1994, or the late 70s? Iām watching some of their live stuff from the early 80s and the shot of his fretboard that Iāve got looks like it has fret markers. I checked the Fenders from the 70s and the fretless didnāt have fret markers.
Edit: Itās got the Fender badging on it, you can see it on the headstock but my BB300 looks exactly like that bass.
Thatās very interesting, I wasnāt aware of any of that.
It must be fake news ā¦ what name is āBauhausā anyway? Certainly not American 
Maybe he had a converted Fender, just like this Jaco guy everybody is talking about here??!
Great list of fretless songs there, have to add Hey You (Pink Floyd) though.
I have been moved back to fretless by these threads in the last couple of weeks.
Last night I put the fretless neck back on itās original body.
A week ago I finally caved and got the fretless Aria acoustic I have been GASing over.
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