Fretless Guitar

[forgottenking2]

Hey Guys,

I figured I'd tell you about this little experiment I did. Long story short, one of my guitars got kinda... destroyed and I wound up pairing a 24 3/4" scale built guitar body with a 25 1/2" built neck. The resulting 25" scale guitar resulted in horrible intonation problems (almost a semitone up to the 12th fret) so I defretted it. I had never tried it and it was actually a pretty fun carpintery project. So I wound up with a fretless guitar. Now my question (Finally). Has anyone here played a fretless guitar? Right now all I'm doing is working on getting my intonation right (since the fret markers are in off spots it gets kinda confusing). I've been using harmonic intervals to kinda get it there, do you have any sugestion on practicing? Let me know if you have been in a similar situation.

Does this qualify as a gear question? If it does I appologize and the administration is free to remove it.

Regards,

[nuclear81]

A fretless guitar you say? I've played guitars made entirely out of air, but they all had frets

[Poparad]

Dave Fiuczynski (www.torsos.com) plays on fretless guitars, but other than him, I've never known of anyone who does.

[None]

I really want a fretless guitar, but I heard that rosewood and and maple just dont have enough sustain to make it practical. Which is why Vigier make a fretless guitar with a sheet of metal for a fret board.

As for players, go to www.unfretted.com

You also need to hear Bumblefoot, and James Went, who both do some mental stuff with fretless guitars.

www.bumblefoot.com
http://www.soundclick.com/jameswent

[Rob]

I defretted my first electric long time ago (it was unplayable anyway), but the experiment failed . As None says, it lacks sustain. You could harden the fretboard's wood (how do you call in English a fretboard without frets?), using lacquer or that kind of products used in wooden floors.

I remember I found quite a lot of information using Google. Most of it was related to fretless bass, but it's useful for guitars too. I'm sorry I can't provide you with those links, but I'm sure right now there's more available information than back then.

Tip: the main problem is with unwound strings .

[oRg]

A friend of mine owns a custom Fender fretless and I've had my chance to play on it a fair number of times. The only way to get your intonation right is by ear and eventually after enough practice it'll become easier and easier to do. Just sit down with a piano or some other tempered instrument and practice with it. Try and get as close as possible and come up with a small melody on the piano and try playing it on the guitar. It's pretty much the same with violinists. You have to play it by ear. The better your ear gets the easier playing it gets. It may sound cliche but "practice, practice, practice...".

[forgottenking2]

Thanks guys, that's what I figured Practice is the way.

[GuitarDreamer20]

Part of Steve Vai's triple-neck guitar is a fretless. He uses it on the tune "Glorius" on his new album, with a synth to get that really cool "cat" sound.

Mike

[widdly widdly]

I bought an Oud recently which is kinda like a fretless accoustic ( actually more like a mandolin since its strings are in goups of two). Playing fretless is great for your ear training. Check out some of the mp3's on http://www.mikeouds.com/ for some old school arabic shredding. There use some pretty strange scales with micro tones which you could play on a fretless guitar