Well here goes!
I would like to get a P bass fretless bass anyone know where to get one?
There are either way over priced or have been modified to be one.
So my question is why not make one of my own ?
Get a Player’s series and remove the speed bumps or get a good condition American P bass and get a fretless neck for it.?
If I save the original parts I can go back to what the bass was first born as so there is no loss. I get to see if I like a fretless P and some luthier experience as well.
How would you people do it with out spending a fortune?
P.S the reason for this adventure is I really like my fretless jazz bass so I want it’s counter part.
Building one is really fun and cool. Here’s my American Tony Franklin Fretless neck. The most expensive part on a bass is the neck. You can find several US body for not too much more than the Mexican but p bass body is harder to find than jazz body for US made.
I have seen used fretless Ps come.up for sale here and there. Not as frequent as Jazz ones but you will find them. Currently in my area (Ontario) a guy is trading his P fretless neck for a fretted one. And just before Christmas another person was selling his 5 string fretless P.
If you find a P fretted (MIM) for around $500 you can buy a brand new official Fender MIM fretless for $300 off Amazon.
With a bit of patience and some luck I am sure one will come your way.
I’m planning on doing this. The first bass I bought was the Amazon p-bass model. It had issues. Bridge was junk, grounds not connected. Pickups 8 miles from the strings, time and some replacement parts made it play ok.
It has a maple neck and a really great maple fingerboard, though. So I’m going to pull the fret wires, fill the fret lines make my own fretless.
I kinda like this idea, on account the lines left will be my fret markers. I ain’t one of those cool play it by ear guys…
I’m doing it this way on account the money is already spent, and since it’s not my primary player, if I screw it up it won’t break my heart.
I figure as this is better than my other plan, which was to go full rock star and smash things with it until it fell apart.
Some great suggestions in here, and I’d imagine there are some cool used options out there if you have the patience and diligence to look.
There’s also the MIM Fender line - I’ve seen some of their P-bass fretless stuff in years past that was good. The P bass I play at all gigs and on all session recordings in a MIM P bass with stock pick ups (fretted though) and it is killer.
I did. It came out good. I suck with it. But i used a 2 part epoxy on the fretboard. Came out really good. I had one very small bubble at about the 21st fret, but it didn’t bother me on account that ain’t my neighborhood.
That looks great! No blowouts when you pulled out the frets either it looks like. I have an Ibanez Gio that I never play that I am going to do this with.
I used a wood filler i got at my local menards. I don’t recall the name but i told them i wanted something very hard that wouldn’t crack or shrink and they had a recommendation. I figured that considering i was finishing the fingerboard with epoxy resin it would suffice.
I didn’t have any problems on that
I used an x-acto knife in both sides of each fret wire (carefully!) To cut the glue and used a soldering iron to warm the fret wire. Then used a dull (!) Razor blade get under the wire and start the removal. Once they pop free at all, a small pair of medium duty cutters grabs them nicely for extraction
Thanks for this follow up. I was going to ask but thought that was lazy of myself as there should be many YouTube videos of this process, but I didn’t see one with the razor blade tip to prevent blowouts. That’s very helpful. Thank you!
