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I want a fretless banjo, and I happen to have one that I've been thinking of taking the frets off of. My main concern is that it already has a bowed neck, and I read somewhere that removing the frets could bow it further. The two most popular methods I've seen discussed here involve either replacing the neck and fretboard entirely with one that's already fretless, or carefully removing the frets and filling in the gaps with wood glue or the like. I'd prefer to use the second method, but of course I don't want to render the instrument unplayable somehow.
Any tips, material recommendations, or things that could go wrong that I should know about? And especially, any relatively simple ways to fix or lessen the bowed neck?
Edited by - fiddlerat on 01/23/2025 14:38:08
Yes, removing the frets will cause the neck to bow further if it already has that tendency.
You didn't mention whether the banjo has a truss rod. If so, adjusting the truss rod can take care of the problem. If it's an older banjo with a thin fretboard, removing the frets will cause the neck to fold up to some degree under tension.
Since you intend to make the banjo fretless, there are a few options. You could pull the frets and glue in thin bits of metal in the now vacant fret slots. That would counteract the folding issue.
Another option is one I did successfully on an old Vega banjo. I carefully measured the space between the frets and cut bits of brass sheet metal to fit the space. I then glued the brass bits to the existing fingerboard with a glue that was not permanent. I played it as a fretless for a while and then popped the brass bits off when I finally got a purpose-built fretless.
Does the banjo you're converting have steel strings? If so, you might want to consider going to nylon/nylgut strings with the fretless conversion.
The move to nylon will reduce tension on the neck, so you might get less bowing than you're seeing now -- even after you remove the frets.
Also, lotsa players find that nylon/nylgut strings simply play better -- in both sound and feel -- than steel on a fretless.