The Advantages of the Fretless Bass The only purely stylistic advantage the fretless bass has over the fretted lies in the fact that the absence of frets on a fretless allows a smooth glissando, or slide, from one note to another, which is not possible with a fretted bass. In other words, on a fretted bass one must play, for instance, either an 'E' or an 'F'. However, on a fretless bass, it is also possible to play every pitch between that of an 'E' and an 'F', allowing the player much more musical freedom, but, as mentioned earlier, leaving the need for proper intonation. This ability also allows the skilled bass player to compensate mid-song for bad tuning. For instance, an experienced player could realise that his/her 'E' string was flat, and for the rest of the song play all notes on the 'E' string slightly sharper than usual, resulting in on-tune notes despite an off-tune bass. The most noticeable difference between fretted and fretless basses lies in their tonal qualities1. Fretless basses, since they are intoned by the fingers, have a much smoother sound than fretted basses. With less of an attack, and an overall tone with much less upper and midrange, sounds from fretless basses tend to sound less like a string being plucked, and more like a sound very rich in low-range frequencies that simply starts at one moment and ends at another. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A711802 http://www.answers.com/topic/bass-guitar-2

Numerous. 1) "No speed bumps (frets)" - this was one of Jaco Pastorious' reasons, he felt that the frets just get in the way. 2) Different tone - with a fretted instrument the fret not your finger does the work of 'stopping' the note. The finger contact gives you more connection with the note I feel. 3) Vibrato. Fretted instruments have a bit of a disadvantage when applying vibrato. On a fretted instrument you can 'waggle' the string from in tune to sharp but flattening the note it is more difficult. With a fretless instrument you can 'push' sharp and 'pull' flat giving a much richer vibrato (like a 'cello or violin) 4) G# is not Ab! On a 'well-tempered' instrument like a fretted guitar or piano notes are 'averaged' out when in fact (for example) G# is ever so slightly flatter than Gb. With a fretless instrument you can actually play the real notes as opposed to the tempered (averaged) versions. 5) Glisaandos - you can slide around like a loony without the getting in the way although you really shouldn't do it alot because it is really cheesy lol 6) It makes people go "Wow!!!" ;)

every thing everybody has said is true, yet they fail to mention that fretless basses are a lot harder to get the correct note due to lack of markings (frets). you can get pieces of lighter/darker wood or celluloid put in where frets would be to help less experienced players.

every thing everybody has said is true, yet they fail to mention that fretless basses are a lot harder to get the correct note due to lack of markings (frets). you can get pieces of lighter/darker wood or celluloid put in where frets would be to help less experienced players.

The slide.