It looks like I will have some down time coming up in October and have started some planning on my third fretless build.
The kit arrived a few months ago but I was very busy between work and other projects.
This is the kit out of the box without any hardware
and this is with the kit hardware
There are some things that I like about this bass, like the body shape, the grain on the fretboard.. and there are some minor but fixable things that I don't like at all, like the white plastic pick guard, the white plastic truss rod cover (not pictured, just too ugly!) and the black plastic electronic cover at the back of the bass (will make my own).
The bass body is very light and feels nice.
The bridge is made of a very light timber.. very charming but no way to ground it.. it will be interesting to tune this instrument when I'll get there. The bridge it's just floating and will stay in place under the tension of the strings.
and these two are photos of the nut, notice the slot where the nut is supposed to rest
.
Notice also that some of the timber came off where the nut is supposed to rest.
I think I can just fill that with some timber filler to patch it up?
I'd imagine that a drop of super glue will hold the nut in place, however I was thinking if perhaps I should make a little reinforcement just behind the nut, towards the tuners, to create a slot for the nut to rest? (think of a classic fender precision bass nut, for example, it sits in a slot).
I have drawn an orange rectangle on this photo to show where I am considering adding the timber to create a slot.
I guess if I go ahead with this, the piece of timber that I am adding will need to have a little round cut so that I can still reach the truss rod with an allen key...
Or a bit or glue would be enough, between glue and string tension pushing downwards? (It was just glued in the factory after all)
not sure about this but I kind of like the idea to have the body with two slightly different colors on the front, (mirrored on the back maybe?):
I am considering a different color for the center of the body.
See the photo below where I drawn those lines with pencil in line with the fretboard
and here a very brutal sketch to illustrate the idea. Color 1 will be within those center lines in line with the fretboard, and color 2 basically everywhere else.
how would I proceed to make this happening?
I should say that I would love to use a timber stain, and wipe on poly for this build, but I'd imagine that some stain will just travel and be absorbed by the body, making very hard to achieve straight lines.. making a real mess to use more technical wording.
Or should I abandon the stain option altogether, run some masking tape and spray paint the body or something?
(I apologise in advance for the rookie question, but I must admit that the many staining/finishing options and all their possible permutations still confuse me a little).
Don’t bother trying to make something to hold the nut in place. It’s fine as it is. Millions of guitars, electric and acoustic, have nuts just like this. It’s a lot wider than a Fender nut, which makes it far more stable, so it doesn't need a groove to sit in.
Just stick it back with some wood glue e.g. Titebond. Though as it’s off I’d take the opportunity to replace the kit plastic nut with a bone or Tusq one. You can use a couple of drops of CA if you want to, but don’t use much of that at all otherwise you’ll never get it off again. Wood glue is easiest as you can move the nut for a short while when the glue is drying in order to get it central and not poking out of one end of the slot. And you just wipe off any excess glue with a damp cloth (which you can’t do with CA). I use a small artists paintbrush to spread the glue thinly over both the nut and the neck before fitting the nut.
I’d wait to glue it back on until you’re ready to string up. Just put some masking tape over the nut area when applying any finish. If you don’t want to file the nut slots to adjust the string height at the nut, then you’ll want to sand the bottom of the nut to do so, which means it needs to stay unglued. You’ll find it will happily stay in place under string pressure alone. The glue just stops it falling off when you remove the strings. I’d have the strings in place, but slack, before glueing the nut in (sliding it under the strings) so you can then tension the strings to clamp the nut in place whilst the glue dries. Leave it alone for a few hours before you tune up properly.
Last edited by Simon Barden; 05-09-2022 at 02:52 PM.
You can certainly stain the main body colour, but if you want well defined stripes, then you’ll have to mask up the areas and spray them over the top of the stain. It would be possible to spray stain on with an airbrush, but it is the nature of stain to spread out when applied, so the edges wouldn’t be as sharp as if you used a paint spray.
You could try using the poly to provide some masking. Mask off the stripe areas and apply main body stain. Then apply a couple of coats of clear poly. Remove the masking tape to expose the bare wood in the stripe areas. Using a water-based stain you should be able to apply stain to the stripes and wipe it off the poly. If you find the stain has spread under the masking tape too much, you always have the spray paint option open to you. But definitely try out on some test wood first. I’ve never tried this method, so whilst I think it has a good chance of working, there may be issues with it I haven’t foreseen. And you’d need a good masking tape that leaves well defined edges, like Frog tape.
As you’d already have poly over the base stain, there shouldn't be any carry over when applying poly on the stripe stain. I’d apply the first coat from the outside to the centre of the stripe to minimise any risk of carrying stripe stain onto the main stain poly. Though spraying the first coats of poly over the stripes has less risk.
Any stain is likely to spread under the edge of masking tape, it’s the nature of stain being taken up by wood. But I feel that spirit stains have less surface tension, so penetrate a bit further than water-based stains. Spirit based is also more likely to stick to the poly and in cracks where the poly has sunk into the grain.
If the top of the guitar is arched, then there may be issues when trying to mask off the stripes with a single strip of tape if the tape is twisted following the contours. Give it a go, but thin strips for the outline and then filling in the middle may give better results.
Again, if you do end up with undefined edges there is always the spray paint option to fall back on, just making the stripes slightly wider/longer to hide the old edges.
Thank you so much Simon, very helpful advice, I appreciate it!
I have started working on the neck yesterday.
The PitBull fretless necks have side dots in the "fretted" position (in the middle of the fret), however for a fretless unlined neck I need the dots to be in the "fretless" position (which is dots in line with the frets, to be used for reference when playing and visually assist with intonation).
A couple of pictures here to describe the problem:
Above a lined fretless neck, with side dots correctly in the middle of the fret, and below the unlined fretless neck I am working on for this build
Notice the dots are in the same spot. Unfortunately this is not helpful at all on an unlined neck, as those dots don't provide any usable reference at all, if anything they are more confusing.
That dot on the 3rd fret should be used to give me a reference to play a G (on the E string); but if I install the strings and press down where that dot currently is, I will get a note somewhere in between a F# and G, not good.
This is what I need instead.
(I have added some orange dots to show where I need the dots to be to play on an unlined fretboard)
At this point I could proceed with drilling out the existing dots, and install the new dots, proportionally moving them a little to the right using the lined neck or a template as reference.
I tend to prefer doing my own intonation, finding the side dots position directly on the instrument after the bridge and strings are installed.
On top of that, I want to shorten the scale a fraction on this instrument to achieve "21 frets", instead of 20 (and a half) like the lined neck I've got.
Having 21 "frets" will give me 3 full octave to play with, from low E on the open string, all the way to highest E on the 21st fret of the G string.
Finished, side dots removed, ready to install mine when I'll get there
In my (humble and minimal) experience so far with the other fretless builds I've done, the finish on the neck will even out any color discrepancy.
The old side dots might still be visible under close inspection and with specific lighting conditions, but otherwise in 99% of the scenarios it will look like those dots were never there.
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