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Tune-o-matic And Fanned Fret


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Hey,

Hit a mild problem with my new project. I am building a fanned fret solid body and would like to use a Tune-o-matic bridge into a string through design. As I see it, the difference in scale length will involve halving the bridge at a diaginal. Is it easy to modify the saddles to accept strings at this angle? Or would it be easier to employ a classical/acoustic style bridge (which would look cool IMHO :D) I would rather not use individual bridges due to cost etc.

Has anyone got any experience with anything like this? couldn't find anything in search.

Thanks in advance

Dave

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Well, it sounds like you would like to eat your cake, and keep it too...

Sure, you could angle the crap out of the TOM, but the more you angle it, the narrower the string spacing becomes.

If you want to do a fanned fret guitar, there are simply some things you cannot get around.

A "special" bridge and nut, for instance...

It's like saying "I want to build a neck-through guitar, but I don't really want the wood to go all the way through..."

Well, not quite, but almost.

:D

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Hey,

Hit a mild problem with my new project. I am building a fanned fret solid body and would like to use a Tune-o-matic bridge into a string through design. As I see it, the difference in scale length will involve halving the bridge at a diaginal. Is it easy to modify the saddles to accept strings at this angle? Or would it be easier to employ a classical/acoustic style bridge (which would look cool IMHO :D) I would rather not use individual bridges due to cost etc.

Has anyone got any experience with anything like this? couldn't find anything in search.

Thanks in advance

Dave

I don't know what a fanned fret guitar is, but if you start with unnotched saddles, you should be able to notch them any way you like --including adjusting the string spacing...right?

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fanned frets are a way to incorporate different scale lengths into one instrument. For example, the low E might have a 27" scale to keep it nice and taught but the high e could have a 24" to satisfy all of your bending desires. To do this, the frets aren't parallel to eachother, they look kind of like one of those Japanese paper fans.

I think they usually make it with the 12th fret perpendicular to the strings, but if you wanted to use a tune-o-matic couldn't you make that perpendicular instead? Almost like you just use the half of the neck towards the headstock?

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