Hello,
here is the Essence I bought in Lisbon / Portugal. I just got it back from the conversion to a fretless from the master himself, Thomas Stratmann in Hannover / Germany. You have to have good eyes to see where the frets were. But I prefer plain fretboards on a fretless. What a great sounding fretless now.
I will have to order a Q-switch for the filter to soften the attack.
I really hope that there will be a file about the history of this masterpiece.
Thanks for the effort, Mica.

Beautiful basses! I know they sound amazing.

That looks very nice.  Did Mr. Stratmann move the dots on the edge of the fingerboard during the conversion to fretless?

Hi, yes Thomas Stratmann has made the original brass fret markings invisible with lacquer and polished them over. The new fret markings are made of mother-of-pearl and are very easy to see. You can see this very well in photo No.2a
where you also can also see some of the original now filled up fret slots.

Here's what I found in the instrument file:

model number: KLB5
model name: Essence
serial number: 95K9208
top: Flame Maple
accent: Walnut pinstripe
body: Maple
neck: 5-piece Maple with 4 Walnut pinstripes
fingerboard: Ebony*
scale: 34" long
inlays: none
side markers: aluminum dots**
hardware plating: gold
pickups: MXY56
controls: volume, pan, filter, mono output
originally made for: Steve's Music, Canada
birthday: July 20, 1995

* now fretless
** now mother of pearl side dots

These changes I've marked in the instrument file.

Thank you very much, Mica.