#AF129 is a real oddity. This is the only fretless 6-string bass/baritone Bartell I’ve ever seen. It appears the factory took the front and back body pieces of a guitar, modified them for a 30″ scale 6-string instrument, then assembled and finished it. The headstock had the original 4 tuner holes filled then was re-drilled for 6 tuners and given a coat of paint and a Bartell decal. At a later date it was then converted to a 4-string bass by the owner by replacing the tailpiece, removing 2 tuners, and drilling 2 more holes in the nut. You can see in the 2nd pic below where the original bridge pickup hole has been plugged up underneath the top and a plastic mounting plate was made to cover it. I’m in the process of converting it back to 6 strings so I’ve made a new tailpiece and added the 2 missing tuners. Now I need to find some pickups. I thought that the original pickups may have been the same as those used in Magnatone guitars such as the Typhoon and Hurricane but after purchasing a pair I found that they will not fit. If I can’t source any I’ll have a couple custom made for it. Unfortunately, a previous owner also routed out the neck pickup area for a Gibson bass mudbucker so that’ll require an adapter plate. An interesting feature is that the back is also carved, unlike all the other Bartell basses I’ve seen.
The electronics appear to be original and the pots are dated 1961. All in all, it’s a really interesting one-of-a-kind (so far) instrument.
