Fretless bass guitar By Mazeti/Mark P

• Fretless bass guitar
• By Mazeti/Mark P
  
  The Youtube clip above is another bass I am selling, but similar tone and electrics.

I think this is the first of this model that I have been lucky enough to find, though I have been trying to get a Mazeti 7 string to convert for years.

If this fretless bass will be your first try, there will be quite a steep learning curve as you leave the fretted version behind.
At first almost always people get a sinking feeling of what have I done trying this; that disappointment can last quite a while, but what you might find is that after a week of still trying to play it like a fretted instrument but with no frets, that your ear starts to link up with your fingers as they land, and you feel your way up to the note, which in the past you landed behind and the fret gave you the pitch... but with trying it a few days, your hand learns to spread out more so you reach for the pitch of the note you want.

It is very hard at first but fretless works more off the creative side of your brain, and your riffs and guitar lines will develop differently; likewise you will also get better at tuning your other guitars... and you can find you get annoyed when someone you are playing with isn't properly in tune!
Even though on fretless you will always play a few bum-notes yourself!
I will mention it feels heavy to me after the paulownia wood basses I have often made lately; the timber looks like teak perhaps, or another African hardwood.
The rather unique head style gets your brain working at first when you are tuning it, and soon feels okay as all tuners turn the same way regardless of which side of the head they are.

I had fitted a set of strings that have red tape binding, but I did a lot of fretboard levelling work yesterday to make it even more perfect to play,  and I damaged the D string; the only new replacement I have has blue tape and I fitted it instead.

Along with jazzbass electrics and bridge pickup, the neck has the jazzbass 38mm nut width.
This was an active bass with internal battery; now it has passive jazzbass wiring inside and a jazzbass single coil at the neck, with a musicman humbucker at the bridge end... as you may know the jazzbass electrics have twin volumes that let you blend across the two pickups or turn either right off... if both are on full it gives a full funky Precision tone, but roll back the neck pickup a bit and the tone tightens to a jazz-rock Jaco Pastorius sound.
A new set of Growler strings went on today and a basic set up has it playing okay while they settle in; in a day or two I will repeat and see what we can get out of it, but already it has a fast easy action and only one or two notes where the string wheezes a bit... mind you that might be thought just all part of the fretless sound!
Chat later, Mark D Phillips...... (PCsGC)

ps. My travel adventure romance novel Virginia to Greece mentioned above, is out on Amazon now... as is my cat journey story Bobcat's Big Adventure for animal lovers.