The Steel Guitar Forum

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THE LOGIC BEHIND THE FRET MARKINGS ON THE GUITAR,WHY BETWEEN FRETS TWO & THREE ETC. THANKS

You take the overall neck center-to-center dimension, divide it by 17.81718146. That gives you the dimension to the first fret from the roller nut centerline. Subtract the answer you got from the original overall dimension. Repeat the process...that will tell you the difference between fret one and two. Add your answer to the dimension you arrived at for fret one. Now take that total and again subtract that total from the original overall neck dimension. Take that answer and again divide it by the above factor. When you have done this 12 times, you should arrive at a number that is exactly 1/2 of the original neck dimension. If you are figuring a 24" scale, the number you arrive at should be 12"...it may have a few numbers 8 or 9 decimal places out, but it should come out to 1/2 of the neck length. Repeating the processes above, you will eventually arrive at the 24th fret. It should be 3/4 of the overall neck length. Say, again, a 24" scale, it should be right at 18". DON'T round off at the 3rd or 4th decimal place. Carry out the numbers as far as your calculator will allow. I carried the formula out 8 decimal places when I figured the necks on the Whitney's. I came to within 13.4 MILLIONTHS of an inch...close enough for country, right?
PRR

Thanks Paul:
But what I would like to know is not the fret distances but why the markings (dots) between frets two and three, four and five, six and seven, eight and nine and then eleven and twelve.What is the logic behind these locations.
Thanks

I can't help you out there...I often wondered myself about that.
PRR

I don't think there is any relationship of the traditional fret marker positions to anything in particular in music theory. It is simply a symmetrical pattern centered between the 12 frets. The pattern is exactly the same, whether you are coming up from the nut, or down from the 12th fret. It does conveniently mark the 4th and 5th of the scale for barre chords. It also marks the b3 and 6, for no seemingly good reason, and it fails to mark the 2, 3 and 7, equally for no good reason. So I don't think it is an attempt to mark anything in particular. It's just a pattern to keep all the frets from looking the same.

Paul sounded like a rocket scientist in explanation concerning the fret distance and neck measurements. It was really deep, but he was stumped on what them little dots mean.

Keep up the good work and have a great day guys!!!

Tommy

I wonder how long it took the guy who originally arrived at that formula to find it. That was centuries before calculators!!! I believe Eric Berry, a master luthier from Elburn IL, gave me that formula back in about 1983. He also mentioned that, on fretted instruments where strings must be "deflected", that formula changes to accommodate the deflection involved. On a steel guitar, there theoretically is no deflection, so the "straight" formula must be used to determine fret spacing accurately.
Re: the "dots" and their placement on a given neck, it's probably like the wheel...a whole bunch of people thought of it at the same time.
PRR

Since the science of fret placement is hundreds of years old, I'm sure guitars from the 18th and 19th centuries that exist have been measured. So the question that comes to mind is how accurate is the fret placement on guitars of yesteryear?

As an aside, in the upper registers on a post-'54 Bigsby neck... frets 16 and 17 specifically... there are definite, visible inaccuracies in fret placement.

I would say the fret marker placement is because the five symbols are more or less equidistant at frets 3, 5, 7, 9, and 12. Some dobros from the late 20's have a fret marker at fret 10. Perhaps other guitars may have that anomaly as well. But the symbol placement system is old, I'm sure.

The markers are also in different positions on many mandolins (10th instead of 9th). There must be some logic behind the dot placement, especially the jump from the 9th to the 12th fret. I know I've read something about this, sometime, somewhere...

Martin guitars don't have a dot on f.3, so I surmise the placement of a marker there is for cosmetic consistency purposes. Martins have generally always been elegantly simple, and devoid of frivolities, except for their most current models.

Now, if they would only place the bridge in the correct position they'd have something!

...and some have a dot (or block) at the 1st fret, some don't...

Myself, I prefer no dots at all, except on the side. I never look at them anyway.

For steel, actual fret numbers as markers would be a better solution.

...and Herb, what's wrong with Martin's bridges?

Per
Well, I perhaps should have put a emoticon in that statement because it's somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

But that said, lutherie is an art, and as such different luthiers have differing opinions on how to deal with the vagaries of wood, fret placement, action, etc. In getting my own Martins worked on, I've had two respected luthiers, including one who was a Martin consultant, tell me that Martin's formula for bridge placement is incorrect for true intonations in the upper registers.

The consultant went on to say that Martin will not admit to the discrepancy because of their lifetime-to-original-owner warranty, which could possibly bottleneck production of new guitars.

So how many guys play in the 15-18th frets on Martins? It might not be that significant of a problem. But to this luthier, a perfectionist, it was. One man's opinion, is all.

As the late, great studio guitarist Tommy Tedesco said: "There's no money above the 7th fret"...

Adding to what Herb has already said, it stands to reason you would want markers at the 5th, 7th, and 12th frets as these are natural harmonics, used frequently in both playing and tuning by many players. The markers at the 3rd and 9th fret were probably added mostly for aesthetics; the 3rd being three frets away from the nut, and the 9th three frets away from the 12th (or octave) fret.

Of course, some instruments will vary, but the 3-5-7-9-12 seems most common on guitars.

Tommy Tedesco also said "It's not a mistake unless they hear it". I was sitting next to him. He was talking to one of the other players, but it was advise I took to heart.

Speaking of fret markers, back in the early '70's when I was new in L.A. I saw some guy I didn't know playing a P/P (very well!), a D12 I think. He was amusing us by hitting the lowest string on the C6 neck and blowing out matches held in front of the speaker. In the course of a short conversation I asked him who he thought was responsible for the crazy atoms for fret markers. He said it had been his idea...

Belive it or not, I used to think those dots on the necks are for decorations. I did not know they were for the intonation or the proper pitch at the certain octive. Goes to show how much I know about music.
Tommy