I went looking and found the following from The Bottom Line.
Roger Sadowsky wrote:
I think the main reason they went out of business is that they destroyed every other neck [they] installed their system on. Removing the fingerboard removed all the compression support above the truss rod and made the neck more flexible. So the rod had to be tightened more and because it had no wood above it, the rods pushed up out of the neck. I saw too many necks destroyed like this in the early 80's. An idea whose time hadn't come!!
Roy C. Vogt wrote:
I was one of the Novatone Product Specialists in the mid-80s (I always called it Bass Amway because the Fretboards were only sold from players to players). I installed the boards on an old Modulus 5 string bass I had. It worked well with some reservations:
If you ever dropped a board, it would dent or ding at the top of the fingerboard and be impossible to repair. Imagine a nice flange at the top of a fretless board and you can see the havoc this would cause.
Dan Fredman wrote:
the longterm lack of neck stability and inconsistancy of the string action (and oh yeah, a difficulty with intonation) were the biggest problems.
Phillip Brown wrote:
All was well for a couple of years, but eventually the glue holding the fretted board to the magnetic backing started to come loose, making some frets buzz.
Tony Lenin .. e-mailed me that he stopped using his NOVATONE neck because NOVATONE removed too much wood during the modification and it is no longer stable.
John Evans wrote:
I played one bass with this and found it unworkable. The components of the fingerboard and the poor connection between the 'board and the neck made the bass sound muffled and 'dead' no matter which fingerboard we used. I also have heard that the necks tended to be unstable since so much wood had to be removed. I imagine some necks would have had the truss rod exposed due to the planing.
(Message edited by davehouck on January 26, 2005)
