Toothless Monkey

[uwe]

My fretted 2007 "Guitar of the Week" Les Paul Money Natural Satin Flametop always had a fretless lurking in it. Some fretted "sleepers" do. Being the klutz I am   or because of some inner voice commanding me to do it, I conveniently gouged out the trussrod nut when I tried to remove it to enlarge the needlessly tight cavity. That is when I learned the hard way   that 1. Money basses feature a biflex trussrod that goes both ways (utter nonsense if you ask me, as if a long scale mahogany neck bass without any strengthening hard woods - like on the early WALs - could ever be too straight under the pull of bass strings) and 2. the nut of a biflex trussrod is welded on to the thread and cannot be removed. But you can sure mess the allen cavity up nicely while trying, jawohl mein Herr!!! Money bass owners read this carefully and don't do as I did!!!

I'm getting carried away, am I? Where were we? Ah, yes, now I actually had a good reason to bring the bass to my luthier with the gouged out nut.   His helpful and inquisitive "Didn't you know that biflex nuts are welded on?"   aside, he was good enough to not only put in a regular one-way truss rod, but also cover it up with a toothless piece of his sacred stock of Brazilian (Rio) rosewood which he secretively hoards. And here are the results (and yes, it does sound great, all blurry but with tonal focus and a double ocatve neck to do silly things with):









Exotic woods: A view of maple top, in between walnut "tone plate", maho back and Bazilian rosewood board.



Another great plus is the peace of mind this modification has given me. Given the fact that the blue Money bass (pictured on the left in the first pic above) also features an albeit invisible walnut tone plate, the fin was deplorably the only material difference to the natural satin one, which of course was in direct and grating conflict with my "I do not collect for fins"-mantra. A fretless Monkey is something entirely different though, I am absolved!!!  

Looking at it now it seems to be one of the few cases where gold hardware would actually make sense and look better with the woods. Gold is just a more organic and warmer tone to chrome.

[Basvarken]

Beautiful!

[Barklessdog]

looks really nice toothless, now you can do those Jaco passages

[Chris P.]

Nice,  very nice!

[Dave W]

Looks factory original, like something Gibson ought to have offered but (of course) didn't.

Too bad you didn't ask him to replace the TRC.

[exiledarchangel]

[Rhythm N. Bliss]

Cooooooool 

[OldManC]

Looks beautiful. I'm with Dave though. Once you get rid of that TRC it'll be perfect! Would a Les Paul "Standard" bell cover work there? That'd be perfect to confuse folks...

[uwe]

Granted, the Dollar is doomed to extinction and you will all be eventually subjugated under the Euro and the Chinese Yuan, but arent't you a bit harsh with your own currency?  

That TRC should really be made from wood!


Seriously, I'm glad people like the outcome, I was fearing catcalls because of the admittedly totally unrawk look of the thing. With this, I can finally pretend to be a serious musician if I bring it to auditions alongside my WAL ...

[exiledarchangel]

Make a TRC out of wood that says "slippery when wet", that would be cool.

[uwe]

Marital life hasn't changed him much, sigh! 

[Blackbird]

I've always thought that when I rolled the neck pickup down (off) the Mon(k)ey bass, it almost was a fretless sound....it looks great toofless!

[TBird1958]

I do not understand how you manage to get anything even remotely resembling work accomplished at your office...............

[uwe]

I always thought that, commercially, they overdid it when they added the walnut tone plate to those GoW models - the rank and file model just had a maho body with a not very thick maple top. And that was already unisually growly for a bass that loiked to look modern. The walnut tone plate made the Money basses sound (even) thick(er) and growly, devastating any hope that a potential buyer might have that what looks modern must also sound modern. Bur of course midrange growl and phatness is what makes a good fretless so I always played with the idea. And the natural satin model had "boutique look fretless" written all over it.

As I write, my Epi Explorer is now at the luthier for a complete remake: gold hipshot supertone bridge, gold TB Plus humbuckers and golt Hipshot Ultrlite tuners - it will be stripped, painted a dar brownish color and receive a fancy wood top, possibly bubinga ... One Explorer to rule them all! I always felt that the Epo longscale Explorer with its fuzzy sounding wood of unclear origin would make a better basis for pimpoin' then the lovelessly executed mid-eoghties medium scale Explorers. We'll see how it turns out.

[Freuds_Cat]

I have come to be very attracted to these basses. Uwe that mod looks perfectly natural. I have resolved that one day I will buy one of these babys.