JPJ

Southern Incorporated gig yesterday, social club in an old mining village in County Durham. Nice size room with plenty of enthusiastic audience members. We played really well, and slipped in a couple of newer songs as we ramp up to a major bike festival show at the end of August. Seemed to go down well with the audience as we received a standing ovation at the end of our second encore. Nice when the promoter hands you the money and says “after a performance like that I feel like I am ripping you off paying only this much” - job done 😎

Yes a Y cable will work fine.

Todays progress consisted of trimming all the veneer fillers back and sanding and sanding and sanding the fingerboard. There were a number of dips and high spots all over the board but now it’s nice and level and flat, and the fret line fillers are about as inconspicuous as I can make them. Next step will be building a jig to cut the fret end slot markers as I don’t trust myself to freehand these with the Dremel. I’ve saved all the sanding dust and I have a bottle of tru oil on order. Once that gets here I’ll be attempting @Andyjr1515 slurry and buff technique on the fingerboard.

At this point, it looks like the slot filling is going well, so no. But I can still faff it up from here so we’ll see 😂

Well I made a lot more progress than I was expecting. All fret slots are now filled and the glue is drying overnight. Tomorrow night it should just be a case of trimming the excess slot filling veneer, and sanding the fret board flat.

There is definitely something on the board. It might just be lemon oil residue but I’ll know better when I’m finished sanding. I’m undecided on whether to coat the board or not, it’ll largely depend on how good the finish is with the veneers in.

Well that’s it, the frets are out. In truth they came out amazingly (or worryingly) easy with very little chip out. Next to clean up the board in readiness for slot filling.

Funny you should mention this. I bought some fret pullers off Amazon and they arrived more like cutters than pullers. After a quick introduction to my bench grinder, problem solved😎 Before After

Yes, both fretless and fretted, works fine 👍

Well the veneers I ordered from David Dykes have arrived so I guess it’s time to rip those frets out 😬

Don’t worry John, I’m a fairly experienced fretless player, both my original Ibanez Roadstar that got me into Fretless in the first place as an 18 year old, and my Fender Tony Franklin Precision have unlined boards, and my Overwater Perception 5 string that I had defretted has the slots filled with a matching dark wood so the lines are almost invisible. In the case of the Warwick, fret line ends will work without having to move the existing side dots.

This is something I have been pondering. I think I will need to either cover the existing side dots (mid-fret position), add new ‘on the lines’ markers or if my wood working skills are up to it, do those nifty fret end markers like those shown below. I’ve got a few different veneers inbound from David Dyke’s and once I’ve received these and ripped the frets out, I’ll decide.

I’ve done a couple and it’s a bit of a nightmare. My ‘technique’ is to stick the mirror acrylic to my template using double sided tape. I then cut to about 10mm oversize with a jigsaw on the highest speed setting cutting really slowly. Then I finish to the template using a 60 degree chamfer cutter in my palm router, again on the highest speed setting. With one sheet of Perspex the double sided tape actually pulled the mirror finish off the back so check on a small test area first (in that case I covered the back with wide masking tape and then used the double sided tape onto that). Other thing to watch out for is the swarf is very ‘sharp’ so leave the protective film on the front as well otherwise you’ll end up with loads of scratches (again, lesson learned the hard way). Of the two I have made, I have also made at least four rejects.

So, the last board layout lasted a week, and the Finally is now relocated to the end of my chain. Used it at my gig on Saturday and loved it, as did the sound guy.

Billy Bootleggers in the popular Ouseburn area of Newcastle upon Tyne. Great live music bar with in-house PA & engineer (who actually knows what he’s doing). The bar has three bands on each Saturday, and we had our favourite 5pm kick-off slot. Lots of folk in for the music supplemented by passing trade and with dry warm weather, there was plenty of passing trade. We played well and the bonus of being home by 8pm makes it doubly pleasing. Oh and first gig with the Finally v2 ‘with bass in mind’ and I couldn’t be happier with how this sounds, now at the end of my chain (arguably where it’s supposed to be) it provided a lovely fat warm input to my amp, and the engineer said it’s the best D.I. he’s heard in a while. Oh and we got paid too 😎

So left home alone, and with a gig tomorrow night, I pulled the gig rig in tonight and fired everything up. And then I had a thought, maybe I should try the Finally at the end of my board as intended and guess what, yes I liked it. In fact, I really liked it, so out came the the wiring kit and I rewired my board for a second time this week. So this is the current state and what I hope is the final state. I’m really happy with how this is sounding across fretted, fretless, and EUB.

I’m confident that this is within the range of my skills otherwise it would be added to the great David Wilson’s waiting list.

To quote the late John F Kennedy “we do not do these things because they are easy” 😂

It certainly will - but I love a good challenge 😂

The neck is bound and I don’t really want to cut the slots if I can avoid it.

Thanks Andy 🙏

My modest little board designed to cover my three needs, EUB, fretless bass, fretted bass. That Sushiboxfx Finally v2 ‘with bass in mind’ is just such a thing of beauty 😍

That Sennheiser is a lovely mic and works really well with female vocals, but it’s a bit of a beast to get used to after the venerable SM58. I thought it was me until a recent multi-band event mixed by a very competent and locally recognised sound engineer, who like me, struggled to EQ it to avoid feedback from the monitors. Once you’ve tamed it, its a really good mic, nice and clear, but don’t on any account plug another mic into that channel - the comparison is shocking 😂

Quick question to anyone who has done a defret - what thickness veneer to fill the slots?