Wrnchbndr
Wholenote
Posts: 353
Formerly Known As: WRNCHBNDR
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Post by Wrnchbndr on Dec 14, 2021 14:31:41 GMT -5
I’ve done about six or seven fretted to fretless conversions and didn’t find it to be rocket surgery. All were capped with a rosewood fretboard. Understand that the fret tangs themselves contribute to the rigidity of the neck. If you simply pull the frets, most necks will be too weak. The cheesiest method I ever did was to remove the frets, repair any tear out, reslot as needed, and use epoxy buttered into the slots while the neck was forced into a minor back bow. It worked fine but this was on a neck that I was ready to toss into the fire if it failed. I used epoxy with an orange pigment. My favorite thing to fill open slots are guitar picks - just slice em up. I draw a line down the neck under the A-string. The slot length above the A-string gets filled with a bright color like yellow and the longer length below the A-string gets filled with brown tortoise that is almost invisible. The key to making a fretless neck however is that you need to be skilled toward getting a neck truly level using a precision straight edge and taking off thousandths of an inch where necessary using a scraper, and sanding blocks. Its just as important as fret leveling if you want a decent fretless and you need to be lucky enough to have a neck that has a linear response to string tension and truss rod compensation.
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