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You can do the epoxy coat, but not cheap epoxy - you need something good like West Systems. There are quite a few tutorials on line for that, I have not looked into it for a few years so there may be new methods too
Fingerboard wear can be repaired though, so personally I don't bother with anything if the board is ebony. I also did a maple board fretless, but the wood was impregnated with acrylic resin before the build
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Having built more fretless basses that I can remember, I never ever put any kind of finish on ebony fingerboards, apart from when the instrument was finished I would rub the fingerboard with lemon oil.
The main feedback I got from the owners of these basses was they would take 2 to 3 months to get the type of sound they were looking for.
They explained to me that it took this long for the fingerboard to mark up slightly, then the bass start losing the electric fretted bass guitar sound, then the bass would start to get as close to a double bass as you possibly can. This sound improved over the years and it may take five or six years before the fingerboard needed to be reshot. I was always most reluctant to refinish an ebony bass fingerboard as the sound of the instrument would change completely and would then take 2 to 3 months to get back to sounding anything like what the players want.
My advice would be do not put any sort of finish on the ebony and play the bass on lot so the strings start marking the ebony, the sound will improve greatly as time goes on.
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It sounds like the whole worry about damaging the fingerboard could be overstated.
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I should point out that most of fretless basses I've built have been for professional bass players so they are played a lot.
Your life will improve when you realise it’s better to be alone than chase people who do not really care about you. Saying YES to happiness means learning to say NO to things and people that stress you out.
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Mine will be played lightly and sporadically! I actually want to retain a hard edge to the tone, which I why I like roundwounds, not flats. If you think Pino Palladino circa 1982, with a little more gain: that's my ideal tone.
I did quite a lot of fretless conversions back in the 80s when it was more fashionable, and the players who used rounds wrecked them very quickly.
If you don't like flatwounds, try ground-wounds or rolled-wounds, they're quite a lot gentler on the board but sound more like roundwounds. And turn the treble up on the amp.
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