Fretted to Fretless Conversion of Electric Guitar with Application of Epoxy Finish

Disclaimer - this isn't meant as a comprehensive tutorial. Not all the detailed steps are shown. If you plan on trying this procedure on one of your own guitars, I recommend trying it for the first time on an inexpensive guitar as opposed to your main axe. Failure to get the fretboard perfectly level and properly radiused will cause the guitar to play terribly. In addition, failure to correctly fill the frets slots will result in stability problems.

The original nut must be removed prior to the conversion.

Frets are individually heated with a soldering iron and then carefully removed.

After cleaning the fret slots, maple inlays are glued in using gap filling super glue. These will be the fret lines.

After the glue dries, the excess will be trimmed and the fingerboard leveled and radiused.

After trimming, the fingerboard is initially leveled using a small block planer.

During the next critical step, the neck is carefully evaluated for any dips or sags and then sanded flat.

Radius blocks are then used to radius the fretboard. This guitar is getting a 12" radius.

A quick cleaning with mineral spirits, followed some conditioning with a bit of lemon oil.

Dead Straight, as verified by my straight edge.

Ready to Rock-n-Roll!!
listen Listen to a very short sound sample of me playing this fretless

done1

You will also note that it now has new pickups. The stock pickups were replaced with 3 DiMarzio humbucker.The guitar will be play tested before application of epoxy.

Pictures following buffing out the Epoxy