Fretless bass conversion

[Lucy1313]

Hello

I recently bought an Ibanez TMB100 and I am looking to converting it to a fretless bass. I don't have a fret puller right now and I was wondering if there were any other possible ways to convert it.

Maybe I could grind the frets down? Idk.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

You can take the frets down level with the board but what tends to happen is that the wooden board moves, typically shrinks more but it can expand, and you end up with bumps or divots on the board because the metal fret tangs don’t move.

You could use hardware store end nippers to, carefully, pull the frets or even better, grind the face down flat on said end nippers and they will be the same as commercially sold fret pullers. I believe it’s been discussed in a thread here.

Also, there’s a stickie at the top of the Hardware, Setup and Repair forum that goes into some detail about defretting.