Fretting A Fretless
Recently, I converted a customer’s fretted P-style bass neck to a fretless version. I removed the frets and inlaid the fret slots with black plastic binding, then trued the board in my neck-jig fretting aid. The job came out great. However, a month or so later the customer wanted me to put the frets back in, because he couldn’t play it in tune. This is a good reason to have two basses—one fretted and one fretless. Gig with the fretted bass, and practice with the fretless until you hear it.
Coincidentally, I had just contracted with another customer to convert his fretless Aria Pro II Avante 6-string bass to a fretted model. Cool—I could practice on the bass in hand and be ready for the 6-string monster bass when it arrived.
If you’ve ever thought about converting a favorite fretless bass to a fretted one—as I did to the Aria—you might like to know that it is definitely possible. Most of you wouldn’t try this at home, but perhaps you’ll end up describing this technique to your local luthier if he or she balks at taking on the job.
Fig. 1 Re-converting the fretless P-Bass wasn’t too difficult since I could tape and clamp the neck to a fret-scale template and then cut the fret slots in a fret-slotting miter box.
Fig. 2 Fret-scale templates are notched along one edge, with the notches fitting over a a"-diameter indexing pin in the miter box wall. With the neck still attached, the template is lifted and moved from notch to notch as the fret slots are cut, one at a time.
Fig. 3 The Aria required a different approach, since the neck was far too wide to fit in the miter box. I located the neck’s centerline and clamped a straightedge to it. Then I clamped the 34"-scale fretting template against the straightedge and used the indexing notches as a drill jig. I then used a a" drill bit to drill tiny, shallow holes where each fret will be.
Fig. 4 With the straightedge still clamped on the fingerboard, I placed a second straightedge against the first and scribed lines on each side of the tiny drill-bit holes—at right angles to the first straightedge. The center between these two lines indicates the center of the fret slot to be cut.
Fig. 5 Once all the slots were marked out, I was ready to cut. Once again making use of the fingerboard’s centerline, I clamped a square-shaped, straight block of wood on the bench top. I shimmed the block to the height of the Aria’s fingerboard so that the block was both level and parallel to the fingerboard centerline. Using the block to support my square tool, I applied strong down-pressure to the square to hold it tight, and sawed the slots.
Once I had cut the slots and installed small pearl-dot fret markers, I passed the bass off to one of my fret-meisters for new frets and a new bone nut. When I get the bass back, I’ll fine-tune the setup.
Fig. 6 In the meantime, the volume and tone controls took a hit when the heavy bass fell. The volume and tone knobs were bent and leaned like the Tower of Pisa when turned. Next time, I’ll see if I can straighten them out.
