F-Bass BN5 Fretless Custom

This bass was hand-built in Canada some time during 1999 or 2000, not sure since I bought it second hand. It's a fretless 5 (guess you've gathered that :)) with a solid alder/maple body, clear high-polish finish and maple neck(-through) and an un-lined ebony fingerboard with a 34,5" scale length. It has a hipshot bridge, standard is a wooden ebony bridge but it was customized like this simply to change the sound properties of the bass. The pickups are soap bar-style, hum-canceling and veneered and finished to match the body and the pre-amp is the companys own. Controls are h/m/bass/blend/volume and an active passive switch and Gotoh tuners. It was also customized with an active pre-amp instead of the standard passive. The bass included a cordura gig-bag and some tools.

Since I attend a music high school, play in a fusion- and a coverband so I need an instrument that let's choose from a pretty wide range of tones but still let's me summon MY own voice. I can go from a good, round background sound to a singing solo tone or a finger-style funk tone with some tweaking. But I think the bass is best for finding my tone. Since I am a very melodic player and I love to solo (when it suits the situation) this bass is close to perfect. It has a real singing quality that my other fretless, and most other fretless basses, don't have. Since I'm a live-bassist I've only used this on stage and at home, not in the studio, but it really shines on stage (both appearence-wise and sound-wise). The electronics are very quiet (unless you sit in front of a computer or something like that) but they do hum when you boost the treble alot, but that's not a problem for me since I don't boost it more than half-way. The ebony board combined with the maple neck adds a brighter quality to the warm sound of the maple body and the result is a very "singing" fretless.

When I recieved the bass the action was to low to let the tones sing out and they died pretty quickly, but with some truss-rod and string height tweaking that was remedied. One problem is that the B-string is louder than the other string, which isn't a really big problem since it's not a big difference. It's a bit of a shame though since the B is the tightest I've ever heard, and if it was fretted I'd bet anything on that it would sound magnificent when slapped. Another small minus to the rating for this bass is the finish, which isn't at all as though as I want it to be. Just a small knock and the finish gets a ding. This doesn't bother me though since I like when a bass looks like it's been used, but I know it will affect some of you.

This bass is great for live playing, unless you intend to bang it into alot of things. The tuners are great, I usually have to tune it one or twice a month, even though I gig and rehearse almost every day! The quick-release bridge is also good when playing live and I've never used a backup for this bass when I've played it live. Since I live in a country where the climate differs alot from season to season I've had to adjust it once in the 4 months I've owned it, but it's very easily adjusted.

I belive they have a lifetime warranty on their instruments. I haven't had it repaired but I'll probably re-finish it within 10 years or so... just so you know :)

I've only been playing bass for about 5 years, but since I practice several hours every day and play with several bands I would consider myself a seasoned musician. I've owned 7 basses, most pretty low-end but some (those which I've kept) are pretty high end, a customized Conklin GTBD-7, a Gary Willis signature fretless 5 and this Furlanetto. If it was stolen I would definetly get another one. I compared this to a few fretless 5-strings, among them a fodera emperor elite. I chose this one since it has more of a jazz bass tone and less of a high-end tone, which suits me alot, plus it's one of, if not the(!), best looking basses I've ever seen and played. The only thing I really would like to do different if I'd re-make it would be to change the active/passive switch, which it totally useless for me, with a mid-frequency selector, but that's just me. I'm giving this bass a 10 since this bass really is more than it's components, it's a bass for me and it's one of the few basses I've played that really let's my voice through to the audience.