Going fretless.

olafgarten

A friend of mine is offering me his cheap strat copy for free,  I thought it would be a good candidate for a fret removal to make a fretless guitar. How easy is it to remove frets? And what can I fill the holes with? 

octatonic

Removing frets is dead easy- get a pair of fret pliers.

Filling the fret channels can be trickier.
Some people use epoxy but I think it looks messy.

Another approach is to fill the channels with wood- which I quite like as an option as it gives you a faux-fret marker to target.
I'd be subtle here I wouldn't use maple on a rosewood fingerboard- it will look ugly.
But using ebony on a rosewood board gives you enough contrast to be able to see where to put your fingers.

Or you could remove the existing fretboard and glue a new one on.

Consider doing a half fretless- fretless above the 12th or 13th fret- it is a much more usable instrument.

WezV

It's easy with the right tools.  

i heat the fret with a modified soldering gun, get a seam separation knife under the corner of a fret and gently walk the fret out with some flush ground cutters.  I rarely get any chip out.

you can just rip them out but it's likely you will get large chips.  Don't fill with filler.

fill with wood veneer for nice sharp lines... You can even choose a colour similar to the board for ghost lines, helpful to the player but less visible to the audience.

mart

Is it a lacquered maple board, or unlacquered rosewood?

WezV

although i did it all wrong when i tried it on my first bass... i was about 17 at the time.  ripped them out, massive chips, used wood filler.  i then used it to practice fret work on a year or two later and it looked like this before i actually started to put things right

poor thing

octatonic

LOL- it even looks like it is crying.

olafgarten

I'm thinking of getting a new neck just in case I mess it up, can you get cheap necks without frets? 

WezV

octatonic said:

LOL- it even looks like it is crying.

well if you're going to try these things, why not do it on something collectable

Its amid 60's teisco spectrum bass which was teisco's attempt to do something "high spec"

ChrisMusic

I did this years ago, and to be honest, there was so little sustain on the top strings that it was really a waste of time, but an interesting experiment none the less.  YMMV.

All I did was to file the frets flat to the board, which also levelled the board at the same time.  It left nice markers, and if you wanted you could leave a slight protrusion so that whilst you can intonate and slide between notes, it has a slight tendency to sit truer to pitch, depending how you level them and what you want to achieve.

Alternatively get one of these...

Duration 9:02

that's what I did, both guitar and a bass, the metal board makes a huge difference to the sustain and playability, mine is an earlier brass alloy one, it looks like a gold board, it is a 'wonderful slippery thing' to miss-quote Guthrie (who is having a bit of a handful playing it himself (makes me feel sooo much better )...

WezV

I was specifically going to say not to grind the frets level with the board... I have been asked to refret a couple of those before

WezV

If you do rip the frets out put some masking tape either side first.  It will keep any chips where you want them, and if you can superglue then back in place straight away

ChrisMusic

WezV said:

I have been asked to refret a couple of those before

  

Winny_Pooh

I've done one. Ebony board filled with maple strips superglued in and flatwound 11s. If I had to do it again I'd do it with a metal fingerboard.