ikay

I had a Squier ebonol fretless with the same issue of the slightly raised fretlines. I gently sanded it using a fairly fine grit until it felt flat to the touch and then polished it up using a series of micro-mesh polishing papers like these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Micro-Mesh-Regular-Sheets-Abrasive-Polishing-x/dp/B003RTABUK. After the first sanding the surface goes scarily grey/dull but the finishing papers bring it back to a full glossy shine. Or you can leave it somewhere in between by just stopping the polish at a point that you're happy with. I was never happy with the neck though as the ebonol just felt a bit fake compared with real wood and I could always imperceptibly feel the plastic inlays. If you do change the neck I believe that both the Fender MIM and USA fretless necks also use some sort of synthetic material for the fret inlays (not wood) so be worth checking that out first.

I think the problem is to do with the intonation of one or more individual strings. It's easy to move the whole bridge and get the outer G and E in tune, but the little 'fretlet' saddles are set in grooves and don't always have a fine enough back/forward adjustment to intonate the inner strings correctly.

I doubt that you'll find anything off the shelf. One thing you could try is to cut slots into the existing floating bridge and add some simple sliding saddles similar to the pic below. Something like that should be pretty easy to fabricate.

I use D'Addario EXL170M - http://www.daddario.com/DADProductDetail.Page?ActiveID=3769&productid=130&productname=EXL170M_Nickel_Wound_Bass__Light__45_100__Medium_Scale

Taking the vol and tone pots out of the circuit will change the load on the pickups and make them sound quite a bit brighter, even harsh. It will not sound the same as running it with the pots all dimed. You may like it, you may not, depends what sound you're after. Easy thing to try though and easy to reverse.

Here's a thread from TB if you haven't seen it already - https://www.talkbass.com/threads/hofner-icon-dead-replaced-by-the-ignition.615049/

I love my Hofner HCT Club bass. No complaints at all, it's very well put together and sounds great. The staple pickups are amazingly punchy and with Pyramid flats it has 'that' hofner sound. I use it in a little jazz trio and it has just the right tone and vibe for what I need. It won't necessarily work for every band situation though so depends what sort of thing you're after.

Spec for the BJB on Nordstrand website says radius is 14" https://nordstrandaudio.com/collections/4-string-jazz-bass-pickups/products/big-j-blade-4

Threaded barrels alone are available on the G4M website here - https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/Fender-Vintage-Saddles-for-Bass/1IYJ Not clear if £6 is for just one saddle (ouch) or a set of 4 (bargain)

I think the switch was made somewhere around 1964.

Earth wire from bridge goes to sleeve of the output jack.

This interview with Mike Watt might give you some ideas - http://www.flyguitars.com/interviews/mikewatt3.php

It's a Maruszczyk Frog Omega

Testing in a different room is a good idea. I had a wierd string resonance issue that was eventually tracked down to sympathetic vibrations from a glass cabincet in the corner of the room. Another common culprit for wierd notes is a twisted string (can happen when installing new strings if you're not careful).

Here are the dimensions of the Fralin if that's of any help - https://www.fralinpickups.com/product/jazz-bass/

To realise the full woody organic magnificence of such a beautiful instrument in bass form, for me it would have to be fretless. Crafted wooden bridges with little or no adjustment work well in a fretless context. The bridge on my RA Mouse has zero adjustability and is tightly bonded into a recessed pocket in the body. The intonation is surprisingly true and the transference of string vibration has to be felt and heard to be believed. It genuinely feels alive. Options of piezo or mag (or both) would be good depending on what it's going to be used for. A piezo bridge gives a full range woody tone, and a mag pickup somewhere near the Stingray sweetspot gives that classic fretless singing tone. I have that configuration on my ACG and blending between the two changes the character and mood of the bass in a very effective and organic way. I think a bass version of the Naiad could be something quite special. I want one already.

Yes, just cut the wire that joins them and each half should then have two wires which are the hot/cold for each coil. Each half is a single coil pickup. You might get some single coil hum. If you do, try swapping the polarity of the wiring on one half.

Both parts of a P pickup will function as separate pickups so you could actually do that. Same for a split Mustang pickup, which may be better for narrower string spacing.

Removing the pole pieces would do the job, but whether you can do it without damaging the pickup depends on the construction of the bobbin. If it's a cheap one-piece plastic bobbin there's a good chance that the poles are inserted into a plastic 'hole' and, with a little encouragement, can be moved up or down (or removed completely). The video below demonstrates how to do this with a Strat pickup. At 7min 10sec he pulls one of the poles completely out. If the pickup has a more traditional construction (ie. separate top/bottom flatwork with the poles forming part of the structure) then messing with the poles will almost certainly damage the pickup. Interesting idea BTW!

Yes, that's what they did with the early '60 stack knob Jazz. They used a larger resistor value (220k!) but I'd experiment with much lower values and find the minimum value with the desired effect. The pots are log so backing off 10% equates to around 20-30% of pot value). The resistors would need to be wired as shown in the modded diagram below. I prefer to just set the vol controls manually as it's not really necessary to make any mods to get this effect and you still have the 100% tonal options as well.

If you back off each vol control just a touch (to around 90-95%) this decouples the pickups and eliminates the 'both full on' loading problem. Use this as your basic 'full on' setting instead of 100%. You'll also find that never going above the 90-95% point will give you much finer control for mixing the pickups. Overall output will drop slightly but that's easy to compensate for at the amp input gain end. Alternatively use an active blend!

It's a bit better than a dust cover but only has 10mm of padding and 600 denier fabric compared with 25mm and 1200 denier in the higher range F1225 bag. It's much the same spec as the old Urban short scale bag but with a simpler fold-over construction, probably cheaper to produce.

Andertons didn't show much interest in taking it as a stock item which shows how far down short scale bass users come on their list of priorities. It wouldn't surprise me if Fender do the same and stop at the cheap version. I hope to be proven wrong!

I picked up one of these yesterday from Andertons (had to order it, not a stock item) and it is indeed at the very bottom end of the scale in terms of protection. Adequate for my immediate needs but the next model up, or higher, would definitely be preferable.

If it's already baffled the experts then I'm not sure that my input will help - but here it is anyway! Sounds to me like a combination of earthing and shielding. Earthing because you can kill the noise by touching the knob (which presumably connects to earth via the pot/shaft), and shielding because the noise varies depending on the environment (proximity of lights, other electrical appliances, mains wiring/earthing variations etc). The noise gets less when you turn the blend to the bridge humbucker which suggests that the main component of the noise is down to single coil hum. This is 'normal' but might be improved by shielding the single coil pickup cavity (make sure that the shielding is also connected to ground). There was a 'click' when you touched the polepieces which suggests that the poles aren't grounded. Grounding the poles can help to reduce noise (and unwanted clicks and clunks). If the poles of the single coil are visible on the underside of the pickup you can ground them by running a strip of conductive adhesive foil across them and connecting this to ground. I noticed that when your finger briefly touched the bridge earth wire (and when you placed the bridge in the cavity) the noise didn't stop dead in the same way as when you touched the knob. If the bridge earth wire was properly connected to the earth of the output jack then touching it should have exactly the same effect as touching the knob. So it would be worth double checking the continuity of the bridge earth to the earth connection of the output jack. When playing the bass another thing to check is whether the noise varies depending on your position. If you turn round does the noise diminish or get louder? If it does then that suggests the noise is due to local sources of interference and poor shielding.