Frankenbass

My apologies for the string of "franken-" posts. I'm not sure what to call all these things, as they're all custom or cobbled together out of a bunch of parts. I built this fretless bass up from individual parts from a kit over the summer of 2012. I'm actually really happy with this, and found the process of putting it together to be really rewarding.

I'd always wanted a fretless, as I find "fretted" basses a little...well, boring. I don't like that there are only so many notes to play, and I find that so much of the way that I play bass is dependent on glissando, groove, and pulsating rhythmic figures that the frets slowed me down. As Jaco says, frets are speedbumps. With a fretless bass, I can do a couple things that were otherwise impossible:
1) I can treat strings (particularly the low E string) as these frequency machines rather than as a series of rigidly formulated note-steps. What I mean by this is that I like to hang out on one string often (the A string is so fun for this) and just chug along, quickly sliding to or from other notes. Fretless bass is like playing an electric rubber band whose tension you keep adjusting to change the pitch.
2) Pinch harmonics take on a whole new level of awesome. You can slide them like a crazy whistle, as there are no frets to interrupt string vibration when you move them around.
3) Playing out of tune. You can add so much menace by finishing a note in a riff by moving your finger down a half inch--like the bass is dying, or giving up the line altogether.Just slowly finishing a riff by detuning it or sliding down toward the nut just makes things feel a little more awesome.

I bought the tortoise shell pickguard and finished this with an almond-colored paint. I didn't have the patience to buff this out to a high gloss, or to load it up with tons of clear coats. So I decided--instead of going for a pro finish--that I'd rather weather this thing and not have to worry about every nick and ding. I took some sandpaper to it, knocked it into some solid objects, and said "there. Done." Now I have no worries--it's mine, I put it together, I like it, and it sounds pretty good.

The setup posed a problem. The action needs to be as low as possible on fretless basses or they're near impossible to play, so I had to stick 2 or 3 pieces of sandpaper between the neck and the body.to lower it down to playable levels. After much fiddling with allen wrenches, truss rods and bridge saddles, it plays nice and smooth.

Finally, I installed a thumb rest on the pickguard. I've always been curious about those things, and I really like it. I tend to play with one finger (the Jamerson "claw"), and I pretty much never play slap bass, as I'm tired of hearing it, so the thumb rest gives me a nice, solid place to hang out.