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Baritone Fret Calculation - Backwards ?


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I plan to Add Frets to the Bass strings on a 650mm fender scale guitar neck BELOW - or Before - the Nut.

I allready have the scale set and frets positioned ABOVE the nut, I want to add frets "backwards" to get a Baritone scaling there.

Is there anyone who have a Baritone Fret calculator or have an Equation for calculating Fret distances backwards from the Nut on a given Scale?

For Instance :

Lenght of fret 1 backwards from nut: (Number of frets [1] x constant y) = distance 1

Lenght of fret 2 backwards from nut: (Number of frets [2] x constant y) = distance 2

...

Or whatever works. Maybe it's Exponential, not constant.

Edited by Metallion
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Are you making a fretboard from scratch? Or trying to add frets behind the nut on an existing neck?

In either case, there are a number of fret spacing calculators out there on the net that use a formula in an Excel spreadsheet, and it is very easy to modify it to calculate fret positions at -1, -2, -3 etc to extend your traditional scale lengths.

But really, this only works if you intend to slot your own fretboard blank.

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There were a cool bass back in the 80s that had an extension to the E so that it could be played ”behind the nut”. If had a fret in stead of the nut (only for the E) and a hook type mechanism that pulled the string to the frets. If you wanted to play the low D you flipped the hook away, pretty much like with a Hipshot D-tuner. But you didn’t had to think about the notes changing on the E-string. Is this similar to what you are trying to do?

Anyway, you have to use “the rule of 18”. It goes like this:

Take the whole scale length and divide it with 17.817 (it’s easier to say the rule of 18 than the rule of 17.817). The result is the distance from the nut and the first fret. Then you subtract that from the original length and you have the distance from fret 1 to the bridge. Repeat until you have the measurements. I put it in an excel sheet. PM me if you want it. I fiddle around with it until I found the right values. The original scale length (from bridge to new nut, without compensation at the bridge) is now 729.6012 (OK 729.6) mm. The distance from the new nut to the new fret 1 is 40.94972218 (40.95) mm. And then you put a fret at the front edge of the old nut.

I have to slightly disagree with what have been said earlier. This *could* be done on an existing neck. But the obstacles involved in this make me think that it is much quicker to remove the old board, slot a new one and add that to the existing neck.

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