This is my fretless Jazz Bass. I bought it at McBrides in Denton around 1984 or '85. The original neck had the frets ripped out and filled with epoxy or whatever. They told me it had a 1968 body. For some reason, at the time, I was actually impressed by this. The problem was that they painted on fret lines over the epoxy. This actually created some relief on the fingerboard so, when I would slide up or down to different positions, it sounded sort of like there were still frets there. I had a new neck, EMG pickups, and a newer, bulkier bridge put on it in 1988. I forget the name of the neck or bridge. Now, I have used a fretless bass on gigs and have, more or less, gotten by, depending on the difficulty of the song. It is, however, common knowledge among my circle of musician friends, that I can't play it to save my life. Every time I have picked up a fretless, somebody tells me to put it back down again. It's usually done in a very diplomatic fashion like "You know Jim, that fretted bass sounds so much more solid. Maybe you should go back to playing it." But then you get Chuck Spurgin saying "Oh no. Jimmy brought his fretless again!" I did try to learn it in earnest a few years back while living in an apartment complex in Bridgeport. I had to stop, though, when a group of neighbors showed up at my doorstep one night carrying torches and rope ;-).

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