Fretless Bass Idea Help

Micahbell

Senior Member
Messages
245
Ahhhh I found a buyer for my Gecko body which sucks but is necessary at the same time. So that will be gone right away which should pull me out of debt, then in a few weeks I start a new job which means I can start planning for a new bass, as I need a fretless.
I don't really have any sort of set idea in my head of tone I am after, I just want a great, classic, growl-y fretless tone.
If you were to build yourself a fretless bass, what would you go for?

I am thinking a walnut body (no finish, just tung oil), a wenge/ebony neck (again...of course no finish), with Nordstrand Big Splits in there and no preamp, just vol/balance/tone/tone
I think this will give me a fretless J-ish tone, but with a lot more midrange chunk to it which I think I would like.
Your thoughts?
 
that sounds like an awesome bass, but if i may offer my opinion:

volume-blend-tone-tone is going to be a very dark sounding bass...
every pot you have in the circuit is going to darken your tone because it lessens the resistance to ground.

for example, by using a 250K pot, even at the full setting, the signal is still bleeding off to ground (in this examle, 250K resistance to ground)
but by adding a second pot, your resistance goes down to 125K, because in parallel the resistance is cut in half.

so you would have a total of 5 pots and 2 capacitors.
 
Hmm. Difficult to answer.  J-ish tone is a pretty broad description.  60's 70's? By saying growly do you mean more of a Jaco burp?  With all due respect, you've done a better job of describing to woods you want than the tone you want.  Can you clarify the sound and/or genres you have in mind?

With that said, I'd probably go back to more of an alder or ash body, depending on the era you have in mind.  Many 70's basses had the bridge pickup closer to the bridge, which affected it's tonality. Vol/vol/tone might be better for a passive setup.
 
Yeah, I know I am being really vague but it is just because truthfully I don't know exactly what I want.
The music I am going to be using it for is folkish type stuff that could really use a nice big stand up bass sound, but I am not really in for that big of an investment and I think a fretless could fill the part fairly well.
So as far as gigging at the moment goes, thats what it will be used for.
But I love picking up and playing fretless, so this bass will get lots of play from me just fooling around at home so I want something fairly versatile.


As far as the body goes, my understanding is that the body does not really play that large a roll in the tone (not as much as neck and pickups and strings, anyway), and I don't have a tonne of cash laying around so I was thinking if I go with expensive pups like the Nordstrands, I would save a hundred bucks and go for an unfinished walnut, and also I love the look. But if the body does make a bigger difference than I have been led to believe it isn't really that big of a deal to spend a little bit more.

Why do you say vol/vol/tone might be better? Is it for the same reasons line6man said? For the first month that I had my other Warmoth bass I had it vol/vol/tone/tone and I just hated it...don't really know why, it just didn't feel right. So I switched to vol/blend/tone/tone and have been much happier.

I never knew that adding pots would darken up the tone. As I said, my current bass is vol/blend/tone/tone and I don't think of it as overly dark but it is very, very rare that I touch the tone nobs.
 
I never knew that adding pots would darken up the tone. As I said, my current bass is vol/blend/tone/tone and I don't think of it as overly dark but it is very, very rare that I touch the tone nobs.

i am a little confused here...

if you rarely use the tone knobs, why do you need 2 of them???
i would suggest that you go for just one instead, and/or make them bypassable.

on my bass, i used a push/pull pot for the tone so that when i pulled the knob up, the tone control is removed from the circuit.



 
line6man said:
if you rarely use the tone knobs, why do you need 2 of them???
I didn't know I wouldn't use them that much until I put it all together and played it for a while

line6man said:
on my bass, i used a push/pull pot for the tone so that when i pulled the knob up, the tone control is removed from the circuit.
Hmm that might be a good idea...if nothing else then I could at least see how big of a difference it makes.
 
As a point of philosophy, I find I like to have instruments that kick out more treble than I might "need" and I'll cut it at the amp side of things - it certainly makes effects and overdrive units happier to feed them a clear signal and then cut off some raspiness at the end, rather than feed in mush and pray for a miracle. You can always cut frequencies, cleanly & efficiently & (relatively ) cheaply. I wired up my fretless P-bass with no tone control, just a volume knob and series/parallel switch (that I didn't need, series is zippier). I have good luck with normal, ordinary, commercial-grade pickups - DiMarzio, Duncan, Lawrence etc. (un-curly, maple Wonderbread necks sound just swell too.... :toothy12:)
Better to save ur money and buy one kickass amp than have a shoebox full of pickups and other crap, and a Crate 8-watt SS Buzz-o-Tronic. "Gee - why does my tone still suck?"  :party07:
All I need is enough volume, bass, midrange & treble and I can cut frequencies on my way to an acceptable tone, the SWR 500-watt stereo amp is commendable that way - to hell with knocking stuff off the walls, let's disintegrate the drywall.... :evil4:

EMG seemed to think that the HZ40 I was putting in my short-scale fretless G5 was bright, cause they said to use either 500 or 250 ohm pots and a .047uF cap (!) - on a bass... (?)
I wanted it as bright as possible for my Duane Allman/Ali Akbar Khan pretensions, so I wired it with a 500 ohm volume pot to a three-way selector with a .015uF cap on one side, a .033 cap on the other, which sum to .048uF in the parallel mid position - wired to another 500 ohm pot. This gives me three presets whenever the tone knob is engaged. It probably doesn't make any practical difference, but I couldn't see going to all that trouble of building a guitar, then having no switches at all to dick with.  :-\

S6300088-1-1.jpg


Oy! OY! The amber bell knobs are here! Next - install the friggin' side dots.... :eek:
 
Micahbell,
if you need a schematic of how to wire the push pull bypass, PM me your email address and i will send it to you.
(the forum wont let me post pictures again)

anyways,
for the bass i am working on, my original design was just a bridge pickup with a 500K volume and a 500K bypassable tone with 0.047uF capacitor.
i changed my mind a bit about it, and i am going to be going with a PJ configuration when i order the body.
i am going to have seperate volumes for both pickups, plus a 3 way tele style blade switch...
this way when i use either pickup alone, i get 500K resistance with the tone bypassed.
and i still have the option of blending the two together if i want to.
i tried both 0.022uF and 0.047 capacitors, and i came to the conclusion that the 47 was better for my taste, so i went with it.

 
line6man is right... more passive tone knobs will darken the tone... but it's an easy fix.  Just use a bigger pot.  You could also use a push-pull to tweak the cap or resistor values.

There will be no tonal difference between vol/blend and vol/vol.
 
Micahbell said:
Yeah, I know I am being really vague but it is just because truthfully I don't know exactly what I want.
The music I am going to be using it for is folkish type stuff that could really use a nice big stand up bass sound, but I am not really in for that big of an investment and I think a fretless could fill the part fairly well.

Classic J and big stand up bass sound aren't really one and the same, IMO.  At least you're being honest! 

Micahbell said:
As far as the body goes, my understanding is that the body does not really play that large a roll in the tone (not as much as neck and pickups and strings, anyway), and I don't have a tonne of cash laying around so I was thinking if I go with expensive pups like the Nordstrands, I would save a hundred bucks and go for an unfinished walnut, and also I love the look. But if the body does make a bigger difference than I have been led to believe it isn't really that big of a deal to spend a little bit more.

Why do you say vol/vol/tone might be better? Is it for the same reasons line6man said? For the first month that I had my other Warmoth bass I had it vol/vol/tone/tone and I just hated it...don't really know why, it just didn't feel right. So I switched to vol/blend/tone/tone and have been much happier.

IMO, body would does play a part in the overall sound, though it is certainly questionable how much.  We can argue the same thing about neck and fingerboard woods.  I think it is safe to presume a walnut/wenge/ebony/Big Singles bass will sound different from an alder/maple/rosewood/Fralin J sound.  I don't think there is anything wrong with your combination of woods.

I suggested vol/vol/tone to simplify things a bit.  You still have tone control in your hands and your amp.  Let's not overlook those.
 
"Micahbell,
if you need a schematic of how to wire the push pull bypass, PM me your email address and i will send it to you.
(the forum wont let me post pictures again)"

Ok, i tried to post the picture again, and this time the forum accepted it.

Note:
the input and output wires should connect together, however, the holes in the terminals are so small that only one wire will fit thru.
so what i do it stick the output wire to the adjacent terminal on the other switch and make it so that the 2 wires touch each other in the middle, then i solder them together.
 
Wyliee said:
Classic J and big stand up bass sound aren't really one and the same, IMO.
I hate to ask because usually a guitar that tries to do two things ends up doing neither too well (in my experience, anyway), but is it possible to get both? Maybe with a hollow chamber body, and piezo pickups and the right neck, then have some J bass pups in as well you could switch between? I played a Schecter fretless once that is a hollow body with two soap bars and piezos and it sounded amazing, the range of sound was really incredible.

Thanks for the schematic, line6man. As soon as I find a few bucks for a push/pull pot I'll try that out - I am really curious on how big of a difference it will make.
 
Micahbell said:
Wyliee said:
Classic J and big stand up bass sound aren't really one and the same, IMO.
I hate to ask because usually a guitar that tries to do two things ends up doing neither too well (in my experience, anyway), but is it possible to get both? Maybe with a hollow chamber body, and piezo pickups and the right neck, then have some J bass pups in as well you could switch between? I played a Schecter fretless once that is a hollow body with two soap bars and piezos and it sounded amazing, the range of sound was really incredible.

Thanks for the schematic, line6man. As soon as I find a few bucks for a push/pull pot I'll try that out - I am really curious on how big of a difference it will make.

what kind of sound do you want, if you can only have one?
if you are after the sound of an upright bass, what are you doing with a solid body electric bass...
you would get better results with something like an acoustic bass.
(http://www.roballenguitars.com/info_mouse.html)

IMO, no, you wont be able to have both sounds.
if you make it like a "regular jazz bass", it wont be anything like an upright.
but if you try to make it sound like an upright, you will *most likely* have a difficult time getting a jazz bass tone.

i dont think that the difference between a bypassed tone and a regular "10" tone is all that noticable with 500K pots, but if you use 250K pots, it may be more noticable.
if you use 5 pots in your wiring, it will probably help out a bit with both of them bypassed though.
 
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