It's not fretted, it has inlays where the lines are. When I was at Berklee, I did one of my proficiencies on my Buzz bass and I played the first Bach cello suite for the teachers and then a variety of other things they put me through. They thought it was pretty good, but one of them commented that I kept pulling my strings out of tune. I then pointed out that I was doing the best I could with the fretless I had only owned for 6 months. So, they all thought it was fretted from about 15 feet away.