Fretless guitars
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rfurtkamp
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Re: Fretless guitars
If you're willing to go unlined fretless (dot markers), you can just get a Warmoth neck for $180ish and keep the existing one around in case you want to swap it later.
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Mudfuzz
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Re: Fretless guitars
rfurtkamp wrote:If you're willing to go unlined fretless (dot markers), you can just get a Warmoth neck for $180ish and keep the existing one around in case you want to swap it later.
plus that way you could get a ebony board which will work better on guitar strangs [it's harder then RW and such] there is a reason Vigier guitars uses metal.
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coldbrightsunlight
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Re: Fretless guitars
Can confirm the vigier metal fingerboard is the best thing ever for fretless. Can't imagine a plain rosewood fingerboard working very well (at least, for a long time without getting destroyed), I would at least put some sort of epoxy on it, preferably find/make a fingerboard from a harder material like ebony which would make the warmoth a good shout.
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whoismarykelly
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Re: Fretless guitars
Do you mean play notes unavailable on a fretted instruments? The harmonics are all available regardless of fret calculation but microtonal intervals popular in other cultures would be available.skullservant wrote:A kid I went to highschool with was really, really into jazz guitar. Ended up taking all of the frets out of a strat and filling them in, he really dug that guitar. You'd be able to hit a bunch of harmonics that you wouldn't on a fretted guitar
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tremulant
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Re: Fretless guitars
i turned my squier strat (my first guitar) into a fretless about 10 years ago - i also cut a different pickguard that has only a middle and bridge humbucker (both dimarzio) and is wired like a J-bass (no pickup selector).
you can definitely learn some new techniques and have to throw out others - barre chords are fucking dumb sounding in conventional standard tuning with one, but you can also slide artificial harmonics around in ways that you would only be able to do on a fretted if you were using a slide.
that being said! if you are planning on trying to do this yourself be patient and diligent in the process! full jaco-style (how i did it) was to pull the frets out with a butter knife and fill the slots with epoxy. But that was all i ever heard him say regarding it. From someone who went down that road - what works really well (i found) was spent incense sticks to fill the fret slots and to wipe away the excess QUICKLY! I did it to mine but i didnt do that last step of wiping away the excess quickly. Because of that I had to try sanding the neck and i fucked the radius of the neck all sorts of up. epoxy doesnt like to be sanded without coming out in big chunks, so if you can wipe away what ever you can by using the flat side of (dedicated) incense stick for this purpose you will be in much, much, much better shape once it dries completely. the less sanding, if any, you have to do to the neck the better.
i guess the only other thing i can think of about fretless guitars is that they lend themselves greatly to altered tuning for obvious reasons, but if you are planning on making this your main axe you've likely got some eyebrow scrunching to do. also i found that if you want to capo a fretless' neck you are largely aided by using a toothpick to act as a zero fret right after it.
you can definitely learn some new techniques and have to throw out others - barre chords are fucking dumb sounding in conventional standard tuning with one, but you can also slide artificial harmonics around in ways that you would only be able to do on a fretted if you were using a slide.
that being said! if you are planning on trying to do this yourself be patient and diligent in the process! full jaco-style (how i did it) was to pull the frets out with a butter knife and fill the slots with epoxy. But that was all i ever heard him say regarding it. From someone who went down that road - what works really well (i found) was spent incense sticks to fill the fret slots and to wipe away the excess QUICKLY! I did it to mine but i didnt do that last step of wiping away the excess quickly. Because of that I had to try sanding the neck and i fucked the radius of the neck all sorts of up. epoxy doesnt like to be sanded without coming out in big chunks, so if you can wipe away what ever you can by using the flat side of (dedicated) incense stick for this purpose you will be in much, much, much better shape once it dries completely. the less sanding, if any, you have to do to the neck the better.
i guess the only other thing i can think of about fretless guitars is that they lend themselves greatly to altered tuning for obvious reasons, but if you are planning on making this your main axe you've likely got some eyebrow scrunching to do. also i found that if you want to capo a fretless' neck you are largely aided by using a toothpick to act as a zero fret right after it.
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tremulant
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Re: Fretless guitars
other things, i guess:
some companies use some sort of adhesive to seal the frets into the board, what works well to loosen them is to rub a hot, un-tined soldering iron tip down the length of the fret wire back and forth for a little while. if you find yourself fucking up the fretboard on the first one you try to extract, this might be prudent to incorporate into the process.
also, what else that's coming to mind is the band horse lords. my band played with them a few months back and they blew my mind. they are conventional bass, drums, alto sax player (who is disgusting at circular breathing), and a guitar player. half way through their set i realized that the guitar player's fretboard was all sorts of messed up. afterwards i asked him about it and he said that the fret wire was set up to a system called "only intonation" - their spacing was all messed up and correlated to the harmonic lines instead of the chromatic lines.
that guitar wasn't his but the fretboard is similar (his was an ibanez gio that had unfilled existing fret slots, added his own, had one bridge pickup and no pots (all the holes on the body were covered with red tape)
some companies use some sort of adhesive to seal the frets into the board, what works well to loosen them is to rub a hot, un-tined soldering iron tip down the length of the fret wire back and forth for a little while. if you find yourself fucking up the fretboard on the first one you try to extract, this might be prudent to incorporate into the process.
also, what else that's coming to mind is the band horse lords. my band played with them a few months back and they blew my mind. they are conventional bass, drums, alto sax player (who is disgusting at circular breathing), and a guitar player. half way through their set i realized that the guitar player's fretboard was all sorts of messed up. afterwards i asked him about it and he said that the fret wire was set up to a system called "only intonation" - their spacing was all messed up and correlated to the harmonic lines instead of the chromatic lines.
that guitar wasn't his but the fretboard is similar (his was an ibanez gio that had unfilled existing fret slots, added his own, had one bridge pickup and no pots (all the holes on the body were covered with red tape)