I spent literally hours looking at guitar parts today. Annoying, but I didn't see any way around it. I ended up getting this
kit (includes a body and a neck) and a
hardware set. I'm not a fan of the gold hardware and feel doubtful about the pickups in the set, but it seems the least likely to lead to total unplayability. The thing that kills me is that it won't ship until after Christmas.
I shopped around for individual pieces of hardware and pre-wired pick guards (that include pickups). I didn't want to risk the hardware not fitting and wasn't sure that the pickups in pre-wired pick guards under $50 were actually better than what's in the Guitar Fabric set. Bad pickups and wiring can be very annoying, but I figure I should first see if I like fretless guitar, even with bad pickups before pouring too much into this. If I do, I can go back to researching pickups and upgrading.
The way I was originally going to try fretless was by buying an OK guitar, removing the frets, and filling the gaps with epoxy. A basic OK guitar now seems to cost $400 minimum, and I could imagine myself damaging the fingerboard during one of the 21 times I remove a fret.
Getting a custom fretless built seems to cost $800 minimum.
I thought about getting this possibly not-well-built
fretless on eBay, but I find Les Pauls uncomfortable.
So it's going to be a lot of assembling for me in 2024!