Hi chef: well, I haven't heard any luthiers swearing on the subject, but I think the reasons for not doing what you are suggesting are quite straightforward.

For starters, grinding away that much metal would simply take a long time and also ruin whatever file or stone you were using for the task.

Also, once you'd reduced the frets to just their tang then when you stop a string it might sound different depending whether you did so exactly on the remaining strip of metal showing across the fingerboard, or on the wood around it. That might be a bit annoying.

I think a fretless conversion is cool. Personally I'd be in favour of doing it the normal way, by removing the frets carefully and making good any slight damage - if you take the frets out well there usually shouldn't be too much chipping and it can generally be repaired invisibly. Then you use small strips of wood of a contrasting colour to fill the fret slots, giving you a nice visual aid for fretting and also a rather tasty looking fingerboard.

Still, there's no law against doing it the way you are contemplating. If you do, we'd love to see photos of your progress and the finished result, if you care to share?

Good luck - C

_________________

Years ago a bass player friend of mine converted his P-Bass to fretless by pulling the frets,as far as I know he merely did the slots with a colour matched wood filler and I don't think that he encountered any problems.I couldn't swear that he used wood filler but I'm pretty sure that he did.

_________________
'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

Howdy!


+1

Should look something like the pic below...



Nice!

Andy

Edit: Swapped pic.

_________________
Pending Greatness

Another thing to think about is if you just sand them down and a couple of years down the line you decide you might rather re-fret it....you have nothing to grab when you try to pull them...........

Pull them and use woodfiller.....I agree with the above guys.

_________________
speak slowly I'm a drummer too!!

And I proudly lack a stick or a kazoo up my arse...........

Just tape it on each side of the fret. Then, use a solder iron to heat up any glue under it - about 20 maybe 30 sec. Use a box knife (razor) to gently work up one end. If is hard try a little more heat or the other side. Then use a less sharp pry tool to gently work up the fret. It really is easy and quick once you get the hang of it. It will be easy to fill the slots if you want as well. I would use wood filler because it is a really small gap. Either way you will end up sanding the fret board some. This way you will not need a radius block. Also, to have the tang in there would bother me. It is just as easy to do it the correct way.

_________________
My ability to spell is in direct proportion to the amount of coffee I've had.

This all sounds like good advice to me Chef.

With respect, your method seems to be like your Forum name - all Wong!

Good luck with it..

_________________
Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

And what if you decide to monkey around with the truss rod? Changing the curvature of the neck will cause those slots to open/close, which could expose little edges of wood, or jagged metal, worse yet.

Beside....grinding down frets is really just a HACK JOB. Its truly a bad idea, for many reasons. But here is a good one......

If you file down those frets, you'll certainly nick that fingerboard. Moreover, you may have trouble removing what remains of the old frets. Thus, the value of your neck will be effectively ruined. And have you looked at what nice necks sell for these days (on Ebay)? Depending on the neck, it could sell for several hundred $$$. But forget about any value for the chisel hatchet fret job.

You might consider shopping around for a fretless neck to replace your fretted neck. You can switch them back and forth if your tastes change. Or, you could sell the fretted neck and reduce your cost of the fretless neck.

_________________
BigJay's Custom '69 Kickassocaster
'90 Les Paul Standard "Vintage"
'00 MIJ '62 Tele RI
'76 Fender BandMaster Reverb
'71 Acoustic Control 2x12 w/Celestion V30s
'71 Martin D18
Mesa Mark IV
'65 Deluxe Reverb RI

I'm no big guitar tech guy, but it seems to me that if you grind the frets flat, you have a bear of a time if you decide you need to remove them for some reason. Why not just either look for a fretless neck replacement or a fretless bass.

_________________
Life...... It's sexually transmitted and always fatal