LeftyBassist.com

Hi,

I got a US made Fender jazz Bass from Guitar Center. It is sort of fretless, meaning there are very narrow fret wires flush to the fretboard. Does anyone have any experience with this kind of stuff? GC salespeople told me it is a factory fretless.

Are you sure they're metal? It's not uncommon to have fretlines as a visual reference. They're inlaid in fretslots, but they're commonly made of wood or wood fibre and woodglue.

I've never seen a lined lefty factory fretless from Fender before though.

Yes they are metal and shiny. They are flush to the fretboard and the tangs are very small. The metal "lines" are very narrow. I am thinking of calling Fender with the serial number. Do you know if Fender would give me any background information? The serial number indicated it is from 2016.

Sounds like someone ground the frets down. If it’s a lefty, I guarantee it’s not factory fretless. Also, don’t count on GC employees knowing shit about what they’re selling.

I agree with Matt. There is no way that is stock. Especially if it's a 2016, there was no lefty USA-made fretless Fender bass on the market in 2016. I also don't think it is a particularly good idea to use the fretwire as lines on a fretless, as wood expands and shrinks when exposed to varying degrees of moisture in the air, and the fretwire won't, so the frets may become noticable again at some point (audibly and to the touch).

Would be interesting to see some pics...

Here is a close-up. it looks too clean to be ground

Well someone did a good job, but yeah, definitely not factory.

I don't think it is original fretwire if it was ground. It is too clean. It is possibly defretted and then inlaid with these metal fillers. I will also call Fender to confirm if it was built this way.

I promise you it’s not stock. Unless it’s custom shop, it’s a mod.

I've never seen that... but it's nicely done!
Very cool!

Thanks for the helpful comments. I will play with it for a while and see if I like it.

I mean, metal expands and contracts with temperature, too. From what I hear, just ask anyone who owns an aluminum Kramer. Or anyone who owns a brass instrument.

There could certainly be problems as you say, though, because it will change shape at different rates.

A very long time ago, I saw a P-bass in a pawn shop on W.48th. St. in Manhattan done like that. The frets were literally filed off... leaving just the tang.
That looks pretty clean, like those were thin strips of metal inlaid. Looking at them, there are no obvious barb gaps- where you'd see the barbs on the fret tangs. Yup- my vote is for metal inlaid. Nicely done. I remember refretting a couple of very old Martin guitars with the rare bar fretwire. I hope I never have to do that again. Filing all of those bar frets down to get the correct height, was a royal pain in the derriere.' The second one was easier, as I pre ground them down to a more workable height. Metal is a lot harder to cut and file, than wood is.

About 12 years ago I bought MIM jazz that someone had started to file the frets off and gave up on the project. It went cheep and I took a chance. They really did a crappy job. The frets were only partially filed and they and made a couple of bad gouges in the rosewood in the failed attempt. So I decided to experiment on it and see what I could do with it. The neck wasn't worth putting good money into its as it was. Better to just get a replacement neck if it didn't work out. So I removed the nut, left the frets and took a belt sander to it sanding it up and down the complete neck trying to take an equal amount off the entire board until the fret and gouges were removed. I then hand sanded it to a nice smooth finish. To be honest I didn't have much hope that it would work out. So I was pretty surprised when I reassembled it and it played fine. It had a nice warm tone and no dead spots or buzzing. Probably just got lucky. I didn't keep it long enough to see if there was eventually any problems with the fret wire being left in, instead of replacing it with wood. Played fine until I traded it in at a shop for other gear. Even made a little profit.

My guess would be strip nickel-silver ( you may know it as German Silver ). Really, it's a nickel-brass alloy with zero silver content and probably not far off what some fret wires are anyway.
It can be had from model engineers, jewellers, watchmakers etc suppliers ...
https://www.etsy.com/market/nickel_silver_strips