Compound Scale Fretboard

[Mike_the_builder]

Hi all

I am planning to build headless, 5 stringed bass guitar in near future.

I have some sick things in my mid, which i like to try (own designed bridge tuner, body style, etc)

One thing what i like to try is compund scale fretboard. Does anyone have therical information how frets should be calculated?

[9956]

Unless you are talking about a fanned fret system, in which each string has its own slightly different scale and the frets are slanted and fanned so that notes are still correct, then there is no way to make a compound scale fretboard. I just cant see it, how could the scale of a string change as the fretboard goes up?

[Mike_the_builder]

Unless you are talking about a fanned fret system, in which each string has its own slightly different scale and the frets are slanted and fanned so that notes are still correct, then there is no way to make a compound scale fretboard. I just cant see it, how could the scale of a string change as the fretboard goes up?

Hi

i talk exactly about fanned fretboard. I get the right name few moments ago.

This my wild ques only:

Is it so that scale comes directly from 2^n/12 rule? What i mean is that you take example 35" scale for thick string and 34 for narrow string and calculate fret positions for them. Then you just draw the line between different scale fret point and thats it.

[tirapop]

Mike,

I think that's pretty much correct. The taper in the spacing between strings should be uniform, so the relation from fret to fret isn't distorted.

9956,

Danny Ferrington built a guitar for Ry Cooder with a dual scale neck. The two bass strings have a baritone scale and the other four have a regular guitar scale.

It is even stranger than a banjo, where the 5th string has a different scale, but shares the frets and the bridge, with the rest of the strings. On Ferrington's guitar, the bridge and nut are split. He split the fretboard, slotted each side for a different scale and then glued them on the same neck.

I think you pretty much have to be Ry Cooder to play it.