Fretless Setup

[Hutton]

After having just acquired my first fretless bass I was wondering if there are any differences from a fretted bass in setting the action and intonation?

[Blademan_98]

Pretty much the same.

You will need to give the neck some extra relief but otherwise it's the same.

(IMHO)

[BassBus]

I should say so. You want to have the neck as straight as you can get it. That helps with the 'mwah'. The nut also needs to be cut very low. The action wants to be about 0.5 or 0.6mm at the first 'fret'. Any higher and it's going to be hard to play a note at that end of the neck.

The instrument can be intonated in much the same way as a fretted. The way I was shown was to take an allen key and toch the string over the 12th 'fret'. Play the harmonic through a tuner and tune the string there. Then fret it with the allen key. Adjust the saddle back and forth acordingly.

That should give you give you a good playing action.

[BassBus]

[quote name='Blademan_98' timestamp='1329677202' post='1545758']
Pretty much the same.

You will need to give the neck some extra relief but otherwise it's the same.

(IMHO)
[/quote]

I wouldn't agree with this. Any significant relief will cause the string to 'choke' at points on the neck.

[Blademan_98]

[quote name='BassBus' timestamp='1329677446' post='1545768']
I wouldn't agree with this. Any significant relief will cause the string to 'choke' at points on the neck.
[/quote]

Just going by personal experience.

My first fretless was set as you say and caused me grief.

I put a little more relief into it and it plays sweet as anything.

[franzbassist]

As Bassbus says, the nut should be cut really low, on some fretless basses I've seen it is actually touching the fingerboard!

Neck should be almost straight, but with a hint of relief. An easy check is to "fret" and the first fret and the end of the neck, and look at the gap between the string and the fingerboard around the 9th fret: there should be a gap (the string has to be able to vibrate when plucked without hitting the 'board), but not much.

Also make sure your bridge saddles follow the radius of the fingerboard.

The Gary Willis setup [url="http://garywillis.com/pages/bass/bassmanual/setupmanual.html"]manual[/url] is a good place to start.

Good luck!

[Hutton]

As always my fellow chatters come up trumps. Many thanks!

[BassBus]

[quote name='Blademan_98' timestamp='1329677559' post='1545771']
Just going by personal experience.

My first fretless was set as you say and caused me grief.

I put a little more relief into it and it plays sweet as anything.
[/quote]

As always this comes down to personal taste as well, which always has to be factored in.

[mart]

[quote name='BassBus' timestamp='1329677347' post='1545762']....The instrument can be intonated in much the same way as a fretted. ....[/quote]
This is one of the other big differences with a fretless: it [i]can[/i] be intonated the same as a fretted bass .... but it doesn't [i]have[/i] to be.

I've never done it much myself, but with a fretless you have the option to intonate it how you like. For example, one suggestion I've seen is that you might choose to set the intonation so that the right fingering position is different on different strings. You might have it set so that on the E-string you need to play exactly at the side dots, but on the G-string you need to play a little behind that to compensate for the fact that when you look through the dot towards the G-string your line of sight is not going to be perpendicular to the strings, so what looks in line with the dot usually isn't actually in line with it.