G'Day from Bootiful Downtown Bond-eye

[gstark]

Hi there all y'all.

I'm Gary, been playing since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and some day I might even learn how to master an instrument. But for now I'm happy to visit some of the jams around Sydney, and I lament the fact that there's very little in the way of decent jazz venues here in the Sapphire city.

Just received my first kit - the JB 5 string fretless - because I want to have a 5 string fretless to keep the '77 P-Bass company.

As such, I'd like to try to finish it in a nice blonde tone, both for the body and neck. And as a certified (and certifiable) Grumpy Old Man ho knows less than zero about finishing timber products, I'm in need of some serious sterring in the right direction to achieve this goal.

And on my wishlist .... how about a fretless neck for a hollow body bass? 4 or 5 string doesn't matter, but I think that the tone that one can achieve from a hollow body might come a little closer to that of an upright.

[gavinturner]

Welcome Gary! Plenty of grumpies here to keep you company. Start a build diary to ask questions and to keep us all up to date with your progress!

cheers,
Gav.

[WeirdBits]

Welcome Gary, good luck with the build.

[Fretworn]

Welcome Gary

[stan]

Welcome and enjoy Gary

[Simon Barden]

Hi and welcome.

Good luck with your JB5 build. Once you've completed than and are still interested in a fretless hollow body bass, you should be aware that most necks can be ordered with or without frets. So if you then fancy building an ES3-B4 (scaled-up ES-175 style) or an ESB-4SC (Hofner President style with some Gretsch touches), email Adam and see what's available. PBG are currently working on updating their kit descriptions to list all available options for that kit, but it's still very much a work in progress. So an email is the best way for now.

[gstark]

Thanks, all, for the warm welcome.

Simon, very interesting info; I was wondering whether that was possible. Hopefully the fretless necks are without the fret markers. A simple dot at the top is more than enough.

And, as I said earlier, I'm a complete novice at the woodworking side: what's the deal with Timbermate, please? Could somebody please point me to a thread that explains this?

Thanks.

[Simon Barden]

Timbermate is a water-based grain-filler. Some woods are very fine grained and don't really need it, but others have deep grain patterns e.g. mahogany, and however hard you sand the surface, you'll always have loads of small pits in the surface. That mean any finish applied on top is going to follow those holes as well, and so won't be smooth. You'll then need to apply a lot of finish, so that you can get sufficient depth of finish to rub the finish back down so that it is nice and smooth and you can get a good shine.

Instead of that, by filling the grain near the start of the process, you can smooth the wood down so that you end up applying less finish and saving time. You can use a neutral coloured grain filler, or you can buy stained (or stain it yourself) grain filler, which will also highlight the grain pores if you are going for a transparent finish and you have a nicely figured top that you want to make the best from.

[Brendan]

As Simon has said - Timbermate is a filler. Generally Timbermate will take stain (i.e., if you fill holes with a wood coloured Timbermate, then stain it, the Timbermate will stain as well), is easy to apply and clean up (just use water), can be thinned down to a wash (with water) and is fairly versatile. It can also be reinforced with CA glue (good 'ol superglue) to give it some strength - e.g., if you're using it as a fill in a fretboard.

An option for a fretless hollowbody is to get a standard hollowbody, then remove frets. Couple of ways to fill the gaps - if you want to get rid of the lines, you can use some similar coloured timber veneer, or to keep them, plant pot labels are the right size to leave small white lines. It can be done!

[gstark]

Thanks, again.

Brendan, removing the frets is not an option for me. I find that instruments with the fretlines remaining (or there from the outset) are simply unplayable. Getting good intonation is a real challenge, because the inclination (I find) is to try to play these instruments as a fretted instrument - with fingers placed behind the (absent) frets.

And that is rarely where the correct note will be found.

Hell, for me, it's enough of a challenge to hear the notes (guitarists play way too loudly ) and then to hear if I'm actually playing the note correctly.