Fretboard idea: cool, stupid or sacrilege? And a Bud Q?

[Bob Gibler]

Sumbitch better not disintegrate, I'm trying to (re)build it right.
The assistance from Ricky and James has been well-nigh invaluable.
I may try that inlay thing. I have plenty of other woods to practice on.

Lane,
Great idea. Inlay would be very nice and not a dust collector. easy to wipe down and care for. It will not hide the woods fancy grain either.
Sounds like a cool project.

[John Wilson]

"Life is too short to constantly be worrying about resale value"

Man, that has got to be the quote of the year!

[Johan Jansen]

My Fretboard: Ebony with maple "frets" and mother of pearl and brass inlays.

[Alan Brookes]

Lane, have you considered a clear etched Plexiglas fret board?

If you put frets on the plexiglas using strips of masking tape, sprayed it black (or some other color) then removed the masking tape, you could put a light underneath the fretboard and all the frets would light up in the dark. Very useful for those gigs on darkened stages.

[Bobby D. Jones]

I used the plex-glass idea on the steel I built about 1969. Mashing tape and paint them on the bottom, strip the tape and put the paint down so the plex glass will protect the paint. Another Idea)Cut grooves in the plex glass, wet the groves with lacquer thinner very carefully to smooth the cuts to invisible. Then cut wood strips that would fit in the groves. Turn over so the plex-glass would protect the wood and give a smooth surface to clean. This would let the body grain show with opposing fret colors, Oak, Ebony for black, Holly for white. Good luck in making it pretty.

[b0b]

I made my own fretboard and put it over the old one. The frets are spaced wider to make it easier to play.

[Earnest Bovine]

The frets are spaced wider to make it easier to play.

Great idea. That might work better with some singers.

[Alan Brookes]

...The frets are spaced wider to make it easier to play.

Why not just make them all 1" apart. Simplifies the appearance.

[b0b]

Here's another one I made. I cut a piece of aluminum to fit, painted it black and used gold pinstripe tape for the frets.



Nobody makes fretboards with wider fret spacing, so I had to make my own. It sounds different, but I kind of like it. For you math geeks, they're spaced to the 13th root of 3 (instead of the 12th root of 2).

[Lane Gray]

I may swipe your gold pinstripe idea.

Now why the different spacing?

[b0b]

I may swipe your gold pinstripe idea.

Now why the different spacing?

For unpopular music. http://bp.b0b.com

[Alan Brookes]

Pardon my incredulity, but for any fixed sounding length of an open string there is only one set of locations for the frets, and that is dictated by the laws of physics. Put the frets anywhere else and the instrument will be permanently out-of-tune.

I put together an Excel spreadsheet many years ago to calculate the fret positions for any given string sounding length, and I've used it on every instrument I've ever built. If anyone would like a copy just e-mail me at afbrookes@aol.com.

[Lane Gray]

Alan, that assumes 12 frets per octave. Bohlen-Pierce and Indian (and some other Asian cultures) divide it up differently.

[Alan Brookes]

The twelve notes per octave were derived from physics; they're not arbitrary. If you divide the sounding length of a string 3:2 it gives you an interval of a fifth. If you divide it 1:1 it gives you an octave above the original length. All the other notes in the octave have similar geometrical connections, which the brain recognises. In a chord, pulses occur at intervals, depending on the common factors of their vibration rates. Your brain recognises these. Every key has twelve notes in an octave in natural termperament. Unfortunately, the C in the key of C is not the same as the C in the key of E, so Equal Temperament was derived, which evens out the intervals slightly so that one fretboard or keyboard can play in every key. But that is minor compared with changing the number of notes in an octave.

12 is 2x2x3, so the number of recurrances of factors is vast. 13 is a prime number, and has no factors other than itself.

You just cannot decide on a different number of notes in a scale. It would be like deciding to alter the gravitational constant. Those non-European musicians who have more than 12 notes still have those same basic 12 notes, but they add fractions of those notes, which still are in accord with the laws of physics.
Western music also uses fractions of notes, particularly in jazz and blues. We as steel guitarists are renown for slurring notes.

I remember a few years ago some anthropologists wanted to know how an Egyptian flute from 3,000 years ago sounded, so they took a cast of it and made an identical replica. What they found was that the flute played in the key of C with the finger holes set up for a regular scale.

If you're going to change the number of notes in an octave, why 13? Why not 17? 23? 7?

http://bp.b0b.com/2013/06/fuse-blue/
I hope Bobby Lee won't mind me posting the above, which he recorded in the 13-note scale. To my hearing, it sounds flat, and gets more and more out-of-tune as he gets higher up the fretboard. With all due respect to b0b, and his enormous talent, I couldn't listen to music in this scale for very long.

B0b did mention that the 13-note scale is not an octave, but an octave plus a fifth. An octave plus a fifth is 17 tones, which is also a prime number.

[b0b]

Aside from that, Alan, how do you like my fretboard?

[John Billings]

My Saz has 15 notes to the octave. The frets are made of string.

[Alan Brookes]

Aside from that, Alan, how do you like my fretboard?

It's a nice job, and looks well on your guitar. I used a similar method on a 12-string acoustic resonator that I converted a few years back.

[Lane Gray]

I'll have pics later, but a local guitar player ?who wants to learn steel) runs a bike body shop, and he had the idea of 24K gold leaf frets and borders with variegated gold "suits" for markers. Came in under $150.
He called saying "there were some errors in fret placement: can you live with some of them being 15 thousandths off?" I said that's less than the thickness of a lot of the strings.
I'll pick it up Monday.

[Douglas Schuch]

Alan, I beat you to your excel spreadsheet - I came up with a program in my introductory computer class in high school back in 1974 that gave you fret positions for any scale length you wanted to enter. This was before Excel, before PC's, etc. We used a teletype to "talk" to the computer, which was on the other side of town.

I was attempting to make a guitar (my woodworking skills were much more lacking back then). There were a number of how-to books available, and many printed fret positions for various scale lengths. I remember being shocked at how many were way off! Of course, the mathematics have been known for years, so any respectable builder no doubt went to the trouble of confirming the measurements before breaking out the fret saw....

Lane - I look forward to seeing what yours when done. And Alan - I assume that is gold leaf paint you used? That came out pretty nice! Can we see a close up? But JJ's is the winner so far. Perhaps Lane's will give him a run for it!

Doug

[Lane Gray]

Not paint. Actual gold leaf. He had strips of gold leaf left from another project.
EDIT: I just noticed that was aimed at Alan.

[Douglas Schuch]

Ah, ok. Thanks Lane. That makes sense.

[Alan Brookes]

...He called saying "there were some errors in fret placement: can you live with some of them being 15 thousandths off?" I said that's less than the thickness of a lot of the strings...

Traditionally, luthiers have marked the positions of frets on the wood with a pencil. Given the vagarities of rulers, even positions calculated on a computer (we used to do it on paper) have to be transferred to the wood with a ruler and pencil.
And then, of course, slots have to be sawn into the wood without the saw blade moving out of position.
Commercial fretbords are cut on a machine with about 20 circular blades cutting all the frets simultaneously. Compared to fretted instruments, which have to be extremely accurate, we're privileged that we use a tone bar. We oscillate the tone bar a lot more than any imperfections in the placement of fret markers.

[chas smith]

A few in aluminum

[Lane Gray]

Alright, I finally got the neck back from the guy.
I believe I shared that I was going with gold leaf "frets" and markers, and that it was a variegated gold (think what they sell as "Black Hills Gold, with rose, white and yellow gold interspersed), both because the artist thought it would look cool and he had a handful of excess variegated gold leaf.
Might it have looked cooler with solid yellow? Possibly, but this ended up a little more understated and less "bling", and I'm cool with it.
Philip apologized for the way it appears off-center, but says he put sensors on it four times.
I told him "Hey, Sho-Bud didn't use jigs and didn't use too much measuring tape. Slight wonkiness just keeps the tradition alive.
Here's the whole neck

And a closeup showing the markers. BTW, it appears the rose gold doesn't energize the digital camera's sensor as well, but believe me, it's solid, even though it kinda looks like woodgrain in the middle

[Alan Brookes]

That's an interesting texture. How does it match the finish on the guitar?