Single Coils for a Fretless Guitar

[JCN1218]

Hi everybody! Been a while since I've perused the forums, now I'm back with another question.

I'm taking my first guitar, and old Ibanez Gio, and putting some love and elbow grease into it to turn it into something I would actually want to play. If anyone is wondering why I would want to turn it into a fretless; I have a lot of guitars that cover a lot of bases tonally. A fretless would be something truly different that I would definitely be picking up every now and then.

Anyway, on the the main points:
I've played a fretless or two before, both have been just a plain wood fretboard. My experience with them has told me that fretlessness mellows out the top end a significant amount and also fairly drastically decreases sustain. For both of those reasons I've decided to coat my board with some hard epoxy resin to make it a bit harder and more responsive. I'm single coils because of their nice bright top end. At this point I'm just stuck on which single coils I should get.

My main concern is output. Too hot, and I lose the sparkle that I like about single coils. Too vintage, and I might not have enough output for the notes to really ring out. Not that I can't just add gain in front of my amp. Basically I'm just not sure how the pickups will respond in this situation, so I'm hoping someone here might have a bit more experience.

Anyway, there's my conundrum, if anyone has any ideas/ suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!

[JCN1218]

Oh! I guess it's also worth noting that this guitar is going to be used primarily for prog rock. So has to have good cleans and play nicely with a fuzz pedal.

[Kiichi]

This is a tricky one. My main thouht would be IT. Baseplate for the bridge, rest normal. Thought is that they remain pretty vintage, but have more of that prog versatity. Also more output. You do loose a tad of high end compared to the full on vintage range, but upping the value of your pots a bit could fix that easily I recon. Be it 300k for starters or even up to 500k.

With 500k you might be able to drop the coating too!

Besides that you can always put some elbow grease into building a Zves Super Hard On clone, the most amazing boost pedal. Super simple and small (I have one inside a guitar, taped to a push pull thanks to Juansolo).  If you know anything about soldering you can build it I recon. It ups your output in the most natural and transparent way. It almost seems to suck more tone out of the pickup. Really just an amazing little thing.

Also a slight compression before the boost can further help with sustain and attack.

So yeah, ITs (baseplate bridge), Super Hard On, and a light compression. That should definetly get you there.

[JCN1218]

Thanks for the suggestion, that sounds like a pretty cool solution. I'll have to look into that Super Hard On inside of a guitar thing a bit. I'm pretty experienced with soldering, so if it's as simple as you lead me to believe, it should be no problem. I might end up going with the 500k pots and ITs if it means avoiding that coating. After reading up on it, it sounds like quite a pain.

[Kiichi]

Thanks for the suggestion, that sounds like a pretty cool solution. I'll have to look into that Super Hard On inside of a guitar thing a bit. I'm pretty experienced with soldering, so if it's as simple as you lead me to believe, it should be no problem. I might end up going with the 500k pots and ITs if it means avoiding that coating. After reading up on it, it sounds like quite a pain.

Putting it in the guitar does require some skill, as you really need to be neat as heck. Making a small pedal on the other hand is quite doable, so I might rather recommend that.