Defretting A Bass

Kennington

Does anyone know where I could get my bass defretted? Im going to be buying a new bass soon and I was wondering how much would it cost to get my Fender American Jazz defretted as Ive always wanted to have a fretless.

Any help would be great thanks

feylya

Buy a fretless. Seriously. It'd probably cost around the same anyway.

Zapp Brannigan

Do a Jaco!

Rip em out with pliars and then get Wood epoxy (i think) and fill in the holes, and then go play a gig the same night you do it.

Kennington

Then wait till my solo album gets wide acclaim, join a huge Jazz Fusion group, leave, then form my own band/orchestra, then go insane and get killed by a bouncer?

Alrighty!

Doctor J

Just buy a fretless neck from Warmoth, allparts, stewmac etc or ebay. It would cost about the same as getting a good pro to do the job for you and if you don't like it, just put the original neck back on. No fuss, no muss. You'll have no trouble finding a neck to fit an American Jazz neck pocket. Plus you don't make ****e of the resale value of the instrument.

niallb

Slurms wrote:

Do a Jaco!
Rip em out with pliars and then get Wood epoxy (i think) and fill in the holes, and then go play a gig the same night you do it.

If you're going that way, take it slow.

A friend of mine defretted one of his basses
over 15 years ago, and it worked out great.

If resale value is an issue, go the second neck option. I'd imagine it would do great things for an
instrument if you were selling to have both necks.

You should find a good pro to do the job,
but you'll almost certainly have to sign a disclaimer, as fret jobs can be messy.

If you're going to take the frets out, don't
use an ordinary pliers, you'll crack the board.
I've refretted several guitars myself, but I did start
on one that was unplayable with its current frets.

Heat the fret with a soldering iron first and
use a fret pliers (which should be as wide
as possible - depends on the curve of your neck ) to gently loosen it.

Epoxy might be a good filler, I think Bloch
inlaid the frets. But do clean out the slots
(gently!) with a saw so that the filler takes well.

Best thing he did was to leave 4 half frets
on the D and G strings, so that he had the
option of a fretted sound

NiallB

ChuckE

I was considering defretting mine a while ago. Everyone I spoke to gave me different advice. Some said it was the most difficult thing to do, i.e.: you have to fill the gaps with Maple, re-sand and re-shape the entire fretboard, replace the nut, etc. Others said just rip out the old frets and you dont even need to refill them! All this advice came from experienced Luthiers.

In the end I just bought a fretless. I think that was a wise decision. Though I would still like to do the conversion...

If you're considering it, check out this:
http://www.mikelull.com/fretless%20conversion/conversion1.htm

Doctor J

I did it on an old Aria Pro II many, many years ago. Just whipped the frets out (carefully) and then used plastic wood to fill the gaps, then sanded the plastic wood level with the fretboard got a good result but tbh, having bought a fretless bass with maple inserts I definitely prefer it to the home de-fretted one by far.

The thing about doing it yourself is that there is no going back. If you don't like it, you've ruined a perfectly good bass. I wouldn't gamble with a USA Jazz tbh.