Hellzero

Same for me, I listened to the album when it was released and found it really meh with overuse of autotune, but this Tiny Desk concert is just so good!

Yep, it's that time indeed. 😉 I received mine last week and all I can say is that it's a very good bass for the money.

Amazing basses at silly price indeed, congratulations.

Or simply put, one is needing money when the other is trying to make some...

Very very nice fretless @ead. Thanks for the photos. 😊

In fact Bill Wyman is supposed to be the first ever fretless bass player way back to 1961 (according to himself) on a defretted instrument.

It reminds me of an anecdote: We were once asked to play in a folk-rock one day festival when we were playing fusion jazz music... We accepted the offer as it was well paid and when we opened the indoor festival, everyone went out and we literally played for the chairs and tables as even the sound engineer ran away... They said the sound was better outside because we were playing so loud... and that my fretless tone was amazing, ... certainly through the opened windows and doors.

1971... A very very early fretless player as IIRC the first ever fretless bass player was Rick Danko in 1968/69 with his Ampeg Scroll Bass. Nice sound too, and I listened to the entire tune even if I'm absolutely not into folk-rock music.

It's a Luthman, isn't it?

Got ours last Friday, but today's rehearsal was only talking and not playing, so didn't try it in situation so far. These things happen...

And the OP has vanished since he asked the question everywhere on the internet and can't remember where he did...

Big Alain Caron fan, I also attended a masterclass with him that was very interesting. His work on the fretless bass is equally impressive. Listen to anything under his own name including D-Code that could be considered his slap anthem or listen to Uzeb (his band from 1976 to 1992 and reformed in 2016 for a tour) Reunion Tour, which is their last ever live album.

Saw that video some time ago and funnily it's the answer to the reversed question I asked to Alain Caron during a masterclass. 😉 My question was: "Does it bother you to play the fretless out of tune to be in tune with the other instruments?" It's something I noticed a very very long time ago when practicing my scales perfectly in tune (with a tuner) and that, when I was playing perfectly in tune (for my notes) with others, the overall "chords" were out of tune, wobbling, so I started to really play with my ears listening to the others and adapting for a total non disturbing harmony. It's at this point that the lines are becoming very dangerous for the music...

Fantastic work as usual. Congratulations @Basvarken !

A luthier.

At the moment, I have 6 fretless basses (34 inches scale), all unlined and 5 of them are sixers, the sixth one being a 4 string. My third ever bass way back in 1987 was a fretless (a defretted Aria Diamond 500/1 copy painted in pearly yellow with two EMG HB pickups and a piezzo under the floating bridge) as I always wanted to play fretless and since then almost did with very few incursions in the fretted world. I prefer unlined fretless basses, but really don't care if they are lined with frets positions at the fretted place or at the frets places as I only look at them when I'm some kind of lost after a huge slide or a technical acrobatic stuntery... That said, the strangest fretless bass I had was an unlined fretless with dots at the fretted positions: simply a nightmare to play as each time I looked at them, it blocked me as my ears were telling me I was in tune when my eyes were saying I wasn't. I ended up giving it to a school after having masked the frightening dots and putting some fluorescent dot stickers to the usual spots (3, 5, 7, 9, 12...). The funny thing was that it was sounding vey well...

The teacher above is saying the name of this flamenco technique, it's called a rasgueado. Stuart Hamm has been using this a lot as well as the amazing Abraham Laboriel or equally amazing Carles Benavent.

Neither do I, when I like an artist I buy his stuff on CD.

And here is even a video:

I also own a 58R head and the fan can be noisy indeed. If it becomes too annoying I'll put a Noctua fan in it as they are very very quiet : I've done this a lot of times on different amps and also measured the noise difference which is quite frightening seeing how many dB's less these Noctua fans really are. @Pbassman, you can use the "special" cable for the most silent solution (looks like a resistor in series in fact), even if it will turn slowly. And it wasn't recommended on another bass site... :

Is it a new Viking boat made of glass?

You are right as this is what the Cutlass originally was, but now it's a kind of EBMM P-Bass... Here's an original Cutlass, the model was introduced in very late 1982:

My 1979 original natural and fretless Stingray that has become my number one bass.

Which is stupid as it's the opposite.