Fretless pickup mule

After a long break, I picked up the parts of my fretless project bass and moved towards completion this weekend. First step was to mount all the hardware on the neck, and test it out on my existing Squier James Johnston bass while I was busy.  

After that, I mounted the neck and bridge onto a piece of scrap timber, ready to experiment with pickup placement. Leo Fender used a rig like this to place the Precision, Jazz and Stingray pickups, finding the right spot by trial and error. I will use his positions as a starting point, using this useful graphic as a starting point: