As a lefty who's had 2 shoulder surgeries, it took me awhile to locate a lefty, short scale, fretless. I love my Sire U5 fretless and I'm not sure if I'll play my fretted bass again. Playing jazz, bossa nova and gypsy jazz, the fretless seemed a natural fit. And I was right, fretless basses are amazing.

When I started on fretless over 15 years ago I just went full on fretless and just used the sides dots to guide me. It just takes lots of practice and checking and rechecking your intonation against the open strings. and developing muscle memory.

i’ve been playing bass for about 10 years now. for the past year i’ve been playing almost exclusively fretless. i was at a local music store one day and in the back found a thunderbird body with a matching neck that was converted to fretless. i bought those and built my first fretless. i’m getting a replacement unlined fretless neck for my old squire PJ jaguar and i’m upgrading the electronics. can’t wait to move on to an unlined fretless.

Impressive playing! Thanks for sharing

Awesome video !…Thank you…I, at 75, after playing from the age of 16, am thinking of going fretless…and I play through Aguilars and Bergantino !….very inspiring.😊

Beautiful intonation and touch...What a pleasure to listen to you!

Thank you for your useful tips.

you inspired me to take my fretless Ibanez off the wall and play it! look forward to more content.

Great thanks Nice tone n technique too

Hey! First off, awesome video all around. Your playing is beautiful and very inspiring to me as an amateur bassist. I've been playing bass for about 6ish months now. The only experience I had with playing a musical instrument before was my ukulele that I played on and off for 5ish years. I first picked up the bass at my friends house because everyone wanted to jam a little and I requested to play the MB4 Squier bass my buddy had rotting away in his closet. Ever since then I've been in love with the instrument. We all play together in a band now and have since (which is great because my bandmates are accomplished musicians so I learn a ton very fast). At some point in my first month or so I wanted to find the Hendrix of the bass as Jimi is one of my biggest musical heroes. Naturally, as all aspiring bassists do, I came across Jaco and ever since I've been enamored by his playing and by extension the fretless bass. It's somewhat of an end goal of mine to be skilled enough to truly own the fretless as an instrument, but I digress. I've been in the market for a fretless pretty much ever since but due to the financial limitations of being a university student I've had to be very budget friendly in my selection. I bought my first fretless bass from Harley Benton about 5 hours ago and I can't wait to pick it up and try it out. The model I purchased was the Beatbass FL VS from Harley Benton because I love the Violin bass style and the sound it provides (our band typically plays jazz fusion, blues, classic rock and psychedelic jazz/rock). So! My big question! As a beginner bassist and having never actually played a fretless, how much will the unlined fingerboard of the Beatbass FL VS be a hurdle to my playing? Obviously that's a hard question to answer having never heard my playing, but I'd appreciate any tips, tricks or words of warning you could provide. Thanks a ton for such an informative video as well as such angelic playing!

I have an American Deluxe 5 Fender Jazz bass I am going to get converted to fretless that I am pretty excited about.

Absolutely awesome!!

hello, always great videos 👌 You said that you use roundwound strings on your GWB-1, but the string always leaves light print marks in the ebony? I mean no deep damage, which indeed occurs with incorrect technique. thanks in advance for your response greetings from the Netherlands

What type of strings are best for fretless bass, flat, or round, or...?

For unlined fretless, should we refer to the dots when we practice? Or train ourselves all muscle memory such that we never need to look at the neck at all? I understand that should all use our ears but it is already after the fact that we played a detuned note and then adjust it afterwards and that's different from spot on notes. I have only a lined version and I found myself relying on the lines so much. It is just a habit I can't get away with, and thinking of getting an unlined one.

I took the first bass I bought(18 years ago) , and took the p bass pickups and the rest of the electronics (the electronics went bad over 10 years ago). Put some 500k pots on it and a single humbucker. Took the neck and pulled all the frets off, filled each space with wood filler and put a couple coats of poly on it. And so far it's been very fun to play. Edit: definitely wanna try out movable harmonics, sounds cool as hell.

Hi, what reverb pedal do you use in this video ?....thank you

I have a gwb205e, was wondering what your thoughts were about ebony fretboards and round wounds, I know that’s how Gary prefers it, but is refinishing ebony a thing? If so how do you do it?

Too bad Carvin's no longer around :( Can you recommend a nice preamp for a passive fretless, something not too pricy?

what in your option is the best amp to play a fretless through

i like that there is a bass clef on there so that even bassists can tell it's a bass clef

Which Gary Willis bass is that....thanks....what strings do you have on it....thanks

Pardon my ignorance but can you tell me what make/model the blue bass is please? Thanks

If you already have side dots to show you where the 3rd, 5th and 7th positions etc are, why cover them up and stick tape in exactly the same place? It doesn't seem to give you anything extra.

Endorse the drafting tape hack, y'all. Big help to my intonation!

I just found out today that fretless basses ... have no friggin' frets! The humanity!

.