Yaay! It's arrived.

Vintage V940 fretless arrived this morning!

It's bloody gorgeous - even with the truly awful strings that are on it that needed half a stick of fast fret and polishing motions that would have embarrased an adult video star - the tone and action is wonderful.

Gonna post some piccies of it lounging on the sofa in a bit when I can take my hands off it for more than a minute.

I was surprised at how heavy the little body is but the sustain is lovely, allowing the full buildup and fadeaway of fretless notes to be heard.

The Wilkinson pickups are certainly great for the price, there's a bit of single coil hum from the bridge pickup when you turn up the treble boost but apart from that they're spot on. I can only imagine what it would sound like with better PU's on it!

It's only hint that it is a budget bass is the lack of a battery hatch - the whole compartment cover has to come off which is a very tight fit so I smoothed and polished the edges of that and changing the battery will be easier from now on.

Piccies to follow..

Nice onee KrysH, hurry up with the pics ..LOL

Pics and price?

yeah where are the pics?

£205 from Gear4Music









Fingers crossed this works lol.

Dammit - no pics - must be doin sommat wrong!

Try again - here's the links to the pics instead.

Full pic on squishy sofa

Bridge and Control Group

Controls are for master volume, pickup balance and active bass and treble eq.

Headstock

The Trev Wilkinson tuners are nice and solid and suitably beefy.

Ubiquitous Bridge and up fretboard shot

The bridge is a nice black coated/anodised? affair with traditional saddles.

Well the links work anyhoo!

I'll be getting a fretless in march I think. This may be a contender

is that the "natural" body? it looks sweet man

I was looking at the Bubinga one earlier, they both look good.

Is it heavy weightwise?

That looks really nice!

It is the "natural" Bubinga one. It is surprisingly heavy for such a small body, It's actually heavier than my SR300 which has a larger body.

Having said that it's nowhere near as heavy as, say a Les Paul etc.

I have it on a wide Steph leather strap and it's nice and balanced, the body has the usual relief on the back of the upper body to stop it digging into you ribs and the forearm curve slopes away nicely too.

I tend to play with my thumb anchored on the end of the fretboard as I have long forearms and a frozen shoulder which restricts how far I can comfortably get my hand back towards the bridge, but even in that position everything feels nice and snug.

The neck is a nice and slim bolt on maple affair (don't ask me what shape it is D or C?? It's neck shaped lol) to which the Headstock part is grafted on around the 2nd fret position.

Neck width is 40mm at the headstock to 63mm at the 24th fret position.

The fingerboard is Rosewood (oiled?) and is nice and dark, blending with the black hardware and red brown bubinga body. I'll be taking off the roundwound strings as soon as my groundwounds arrive to minimise fingerboard wear.

The headstock is angled back slightly and is faced with a 2mm slice of Bubinga to match the body with the Vintage name inlaid in, presumably at this price, fake abalone.

The tuners are Trev Wilkinson WJB650BK black tuners - nice and smooth tho I haven't had it long enough to tell you how they hold tuning yet.

Control knobs are black metal push on ones (I'd have preferred ones with a grub screw but hey - at this price?)

The pickups are Trev Wilkinson active ceramic magnet ones in a P-bass neck/J-bass bridge arrangement and are a lot more powerful than the ones in my Ibanez SR300, requiring a good quarter turn less gain on my amp input to stop too much feedback etc.

The bridge like all the rest of the hardware is Wilkinson and is a pretty traditional thru string bridge except it's cast rather than bent steel - not sure if it's coated or anodised but I'm not about to scratch it to see lol.

And that's it folks - I love it, it's exceeded my expectations that's for sure.

Looks nice man!
I. Wants. Sound Clips.
NAOW!

Sound clips erk!!

I'll see what I can do lol - recording meself isn't sommat I've done before

Wow that looks awesome! I've attempted to play a fretless bass but it was a mess - both the bass and my playing the bass was a home made standup one from a friend who played in a punk garage band. I don't know how but he managed to squeeze out audible sounds just fine.

Lovely

KrysH wrote:Sound clips erk!!

I'll see what I can do lol - recording meself isn't sommat I've done before

If you do it...I will too lol Not only should it make you feel less afraid, it would be a major confidence boost for everyone after you hear me "play" hahaha

Well here it is erk!



Didn't do much with it, just a backing track with Magix and then set the controls roughly to a nice mellow sound.

sounding nice
also are there position markers on the side of the finger board?
cause u seem to get the intonation spot on and that must be hard if there isnt

Thank you

There's just the usual ones at 3 5 7 9 12 15 etc, sometimes I get it spot on and other times it sounds atrocious lol.
The recording of the bass parts for the track was done after a bit of practice then I split the audio recording into two takes.

I must admit the recording facility in Magix Music Maker is pretty awful so I did the recording bit in cakewalk.

I always wondered what it feels like to do slides on a fretless.

*shifty eyes*
Is it... Is it wonderful?

sounds really nice man

It's pretty sexy even on roundwounds lol. You have to be careful not to be doing it all the time as well otherwise you'd just be sliding around the fretboard like a loony no matter what song you play.

Here's a thought to tickle your fancy, if you slide up, the further you slide the louder the note gets and vice versa mmmmmmmm!

Thanks for all the comments folks

There's one of these on ebay going for £90 at the moment BIN is £150 I'm so tempted but I can't buy another bass that I haven't tried yet!

Yes very sexy!

Hubby went; oh let me guess ... that's your next bass?

omg, I think I'm in love <3