Has anyone considered the possibilities of a totally fretless NS? No other changes to the instrument except no frets. That would be cool beyond words, I would think.

I think the bass side fretless is cool and an advanced player like Don Schiff or Steve Adelson can do wonderful music with it ,but a fretless melody side would be very difficult to work with .
Even if it was lined it would be very hard to do chords and besides the sound would be very "plinky".

I messed around with a fretless Strat for about a year ,E-bow worked ,but it just had no practical musical application for me.

Yes, and I would like the half fretless combination better. I play some fretless guitar and do not like the dull sound of thin and high pitched strings, so therefore fretless melody side doesn't make sense to me. But for the thicker and lower tuned strings I totally love the fretless sound and micro tonal intonation possibilities! I would rather take a Grand or an SG-12 with a fretless bass side and a fretted melody side, to have six rather than four strings of each kind.

I de-fretted a Conklin GT-7, 7 string bass.
The high thin strings did not sound good to my ears, so I sold it.

I now have a 5 string fretless bass with a low B string, and a heavy enough high G string to have a nice tone.

I have an NS, and for me 1/2 fretless NS would be enough.

Lee

That's cool. I was thinking along the lines of texture and the thinner sound would actually have a place. Michael Manring has pretty thin strings on his basses for his altered tunings and if you guys have a minute, go find "A Child is Born" from Sylvain Luc's "Solo Ambre" album...he plays the melody and solo on a fretless guitar and it sounds really cool.

Well, just a thought. Thanks for the responses!