In regard to the tint in the finish on this bass’ fingerboard; I suggest that the luthier may have used something other than a lacquer or polyurethane based product. Back in the days when I was making and repairing instruments, I would offer fretted to fretless conversions in a variety of ways. The most “traditional” method called for removing the fretboard and replacing it with one that I crafted from ebony, but I only did this a handful of times.
The vast majority of basses that I converted to fretless were Fenders. I don’t believe that I ever did this to a “slab board” Fender. As best I recall, all of the Fender basses that I converted had the thin, curved veneer rosewood boards which really did not make removal/replacement a practical solution. For these basses, I’d remove the frets, fill the slots with maple, then plane the board. This would work pretty well for basses with dot inlays and for players who strung them with flat-wounds. Players who used round-wounds could expect the strings to chew through the exposed wood and dramatically reduce the longevity of the board.
On Jazz Basses that had rectangular “pearloid” inlays, this was not an ideal solution as the resonance of the strings on the inlays was markedly different than it was on the wood.
I read an interview with Jaco Pastorious sometime in the ’70’s when he explained that he pulled the frets off of his bass with a butter knife, filled the slots with putty, and coated the board with Pettit’s Poly Poxy.
Pettit Paints is a company that makes and distributes paints, resins, and other coatings geared for the marine industry. I used the technique that Jaco described, (but did not use a butter knife, nor did I use wood putty), and coated a board, planed and polished it, and was very pleased with the results. The epoxy coated boards proved to be much more durable than bare wood, and eliminated the problem that block inlays presented.
A few years later when Jaco paid his first visit to my shop, I asked him if the Poly Poxy story was correct. He replied in the affirmative.
One interesting characteristic of the Poly Poxy is that it had a translucent greenish hue. On the rosewood this was not noticeable, but on the maple strips and the inlays it was quite noticeable, and upon close inspection created an effect that I found to be moderately hideous, yet subtly repulsive.
I believe that Mike Pedulla used a similar product but without the greenish cast on his Buzz Basses.
