Not being a native fretless instrument player I decided that I needed to be able to see where to put my fingers, but didn't want to put fretlines on the neck ...
I had a look around to see what others had done and found a couple of examples that I liked where the fret positions were marked on the side of the neck ...
Cool ... I decided to do something similar
1st thing was to work out exactly where the marks needed to be. I found a couple of different websites that had fret scale calculators (eg: http://www.stewmac.com/FretCalculator) and using the 34" scale got the same dimensions on all of them.
I compared this to another 34" scale bass that I have and the measurements were right (measure twice, cut once!)
I then marked up the neck and found that the guys in the factory had put the inlays in the side of the neck in the wrong places. I thought it must have been me, but after trying to re-calculate where the dots should be positioned using different scales (like 33.5" etc) and comparing with other instruments I'm pretty sure now that they're just in the wrong places.
Got my new Dremel out and using a fine tool I cut indentations along the neck and then filled them with Timbermate. Then sanded it all back to make it smooth.
Pretty happy with the result ... just have to decide what to do about the inlays that're still there - or just leave them. Wondering if the fix may end up being more trouble and look bad ... any suggestions welcome!!
Reply With Quote