Replacing the frets and preamp in a
Warwick 6 String Streamer Bass
That was converted to fretless

 

Someone pulled the frets out of this poor Warwick.
They made a mess out of the wenge fingerboard.
The preamp was a homemade deal that didn't work.

We refretted it and replaced the preamp.



Here you can see the custom paint job
and the fretless fingerboard



The slots were filled with some type of wood filler.
The way it looks in the picture is just how it looked
when we started on it. We carefully cleaned up the slots.



Here it is ready for a good leveling of the wenge fingerboard.
We tried to cover up any traces of the damage that was done.



Here's an in-between shot. The fingerboard is fixed.
Some fretwire is installed but no
fret beveleing or leveling has been done yet.



Here we're finishing up on the frets and still trying to fix the
mess that was made out of the fingerboard.
Wenge shreds pretty easily when you pull frets out of it.
It's not so surprising that a defret would cause all this.
Pulling the frets out is the easy part. Cleaning it up, not so much.
It looks as though it could use a good paint job, too.



After removing the home-brew preamp and broken pots, we
wired in the Aguilar OBP-3 Preamp. We decided to go with a
master volume with push/pull active/passive selection.
This way you can run low-output, or keep playing when the
batteries go dead. The pickup selection is done via a blend pot.
The OBP-3 has a stacked bass and treble control.
Mids are on a push/pull pot.
Pulling the knob up selects the mid boost freq.
We chose to run it at 18 volts to allow maximum clean headroom.



Here's a terrible full picture. Sorry about the lighting on that one.



This last shot gives you a good idea of how clean the finished
product turned out.