I’ve fallen in love with a bass i’ve seen, but the pesky thing has no frets on it…though of course that is part of its charm, both aesthetically and by dint of being different to my usual bass.

Has anyone learned to play fretless coming from a background of fretted? How hard is it? I’m not hoping to be the next Jaco or anything, but I”m also hoping not to sound as out of tune as a dyspraxic tone-deaf five year-old learning the violin…

I helped my lad to make a fretless bass from his old bass guitar; he says it’s pretty much the same. Get it bought!

I used to worry about playing bass on stage, bought one of those a few years back and it really worked. Had no worries since

I’ve got a homemade one too, unlined mighty mite P-Bass neck. Is no different but there will be a few duff notes to start until you’ve got used to it.

I’ve got a set of these on mine and it’s as close to EUB as I’ve heard:

http://www.gallistrings.com/inglese/scheda_prodotto.asp?id_cat=1&id_sot=17&id_sot_2=&id_pro=78

Not cheap but had mine on for going on 2 years now.

So yeah buy it!

coming from a classical cellist background I found fretless much easier than fretted initially, then got my rick ‘cos it looked ace and lemmy had one and now find fretless a bit odd for the first half hour or so.

Cool, that’s all quite reassuring! I think I might just give it a go….
It will be quite a big decision for me as it would involve selling my strat, but now after years of oscillating between bass and 6-string I’ve finally come to realise that I’m far more of a bassist than a guitarist, so selling the strat won’t hurt as much as it would have done a while ago 8)

I guess it is always good to have challenges, so something new to invigorate my playing would be good….

….I’ll take a trip to the guitar shop and give it a whirl!

You’ll be fine – fretless bass is way easier intonation-wise than the evil violin!

Tazzy, i think we posted at the same time… I guess your background leant itself to fretless initially, but it’s strange that fretless now seems tricky…all about motor muscle learning I suppose! I wonder if playing fretless would screw up my fretted playing though. what do you find difficult about it now? has the ricky meant you’ve just got a bit less precise with finger placement?

CGG – yes, it’s memory of other kids at school (30 yrs ago!) learning the violin which put me off so far 😯

I came from guitar to fretless bass. Now fretted ones feel weird. ITs easy to learn, and TBH not much different from fretted, after a while you don’t look anyway!

it’s probably more to do with the music styles played on different basses, and the fact that the rick made me lazy.

when money allows I’m going for a big boy extended range bass to get properly odd, then It’ll be learning a whole new system of playing

Tazzy, I heard 7 strings are considered the minimum big boy bass these days…….. 😈

want an 11 string conklin in zebrawood

just googled conklin 11 strings- my brain now hurts and i feel a bit frightened.

On an entirely different but still bass related subject, check out Circle K strings – really really great! Just put a balanced tension .142 (not a typo!) set on my 36″ five and there’s just so much tone, from high down way low.

looooow.

these posts are making me think fretless is pretty mainstream in comparison to some of the directions i could be heading in!