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Well, I Thought I'd Seen It All


stewblack

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I've seen more attempts at this, but the problem is usually getting the action high enough so the few frets it has don't buzz, and low enough so fretless playing is still comfortable. Ibanez made a signature bass for Alphonso Johnson in the early 1980s based on the Musician MC924 but with only 12 frets, called the AJ10. Not a huge success... 

Fun gimmick for people who genuinely don't venture above the 7th fret and like to show that off.

Edited by LeftyJ
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What I'd like to know is, are the side dots on the fretless end where the frets should be? I think that bass would work much better if it was the other way around, and the fretted part was after the 12th fret where it's really difficult to intonate.

On YouTube a few months ago, I saw a demo of a bass that can switch between fretted and fretless at the click of a switch. Quite funky!

Edited by TheLowDown
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20 minutes ago, TheLowDown said:

 I think that bass would work much better if it was the other way around, and the fretted part was after the 12th fret where it's really difficult to intonate.

The action would have to be insanely high for the strings not to make contact with the frets when you were playing fretless.

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To a point, but nowhere near what it would be like with the fretless section at the nut. With the frets towards the dusty end of the neck, the fretless part would be mostly useless as there would effectively be a large step between where your finger holds the string down and the witness point of the bridge. The closer to the frets you would play, the higher the action would need to be to clear the fret. If you can't visualise it, try put a coin lying on your 12th fret and try hold the string down at the 7th fret and see if the string clears it 😉

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5 hours ago, TheLowDown said:

With frets, the action is going to be high no matter what.

At this point I have hard time believing you are not joking.... :shok:

Seriously?.... :facepalm:

It's all most on the same level as in don't understanding why a time machine would be so complicated to build when you can just turn the time on your watch backwards.

Answer me this, how does frets work, how come a tone is produced when you press a finger behind one of them, and what happens if your string action is too low?

It's really really basic physics to the point where it's really more of just being common sense.  

Edited by Baloney Balderdash
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