Fretless Guitar

[Nilsefix]

Hey .

I have an old Ibanez 360\370 EX.

I want to turn into a fretless guitar.. Without changing the neck.

How much work is it for a not-very-handy person to take out the frets , put in what ever you shoult put in (what is that anyway?) and do it done?

Please explain the process

Nilsefix

[Biblical]

sombody told me that fretless guitars dont really work, have you tried one yet, if they do work go ahead

[spirit]

sombody told me that fretless guitars dont really work, have you tried one yet, if they do work go ahead

Erm, violins work, don't they? And they don't have frets.

[CoolJay]

There are fretless guitars that work just fine. Dweezil Zappa uses one ona few songs on one of his albums. It sounds very interesting.

Also, I believe G&L Will do a fretless fingerboard on your custom guitar order.

Anyway, I'm not offering suggestions on how to do it, but I DO know that it CAN be done.

Jay.

[GregP]

It can definitely be done. I've seen a video of a very skilled fretless guitar player burning it up. Good luck trying to do anything more than 2-note chords, but the soloing should be neat! I'd be wary of what wood is used, though... the guitarist I speak of had an aluminum fingerboard... you'll want something dense like ebony, at least.

Greg

[Nilsefix]

i have a rosewood fingerboard..

I dont have the money for a new neck

Nilsefix

[Primal]

Erm, violins work, don't they? And they don't have frets.

A violin's strings are played with a bow which keeps the string vibrating. If you have ever heard pizzicato strings (where they pluck the strings) you would know that the string will not vibrate much at all. Also, violin strings are a bit larger I think.

[Jon Bell]

You might want to do a search on google (or google groups) for converting a bass in a fretless. Obviously fretless basses are more common than fretless guitars and I've regularly seen the topic appear on various bass forums.

Jon

[www]

You could use a wood saturation treatment to protect the rosewood. It is a thin mix of two part epoxy that seeps into the wood. It hardens well and it will save your wood from being eaten by the strings.

Look Here

andhere

This might be of some help or maybe not!More about epoxy

[lovekraft]

Check out Dave "FUSE" Fiuczynski- his work with Screaming Headless Torsos define fretless guitar! Yes, it works. I think he's using a rosewood fingerboard with inlayed markers.

[budman68]

Here ya go........

http://www.unfretted.com/loader.php?LINK=sitelinks

[skibum5545]

pull the frets, inlay maple strips squeezed into the fret slots, and sand smooth with a radiused block. A friend of mine made his own fretless neck, and it worked fine.

[ultraman]

Erm, violins work, don't they? And they don't have frets.

A violin's strings are played with a bow which keeps the string vibrating. If you have ever heard pizzicato strings (where they pluck the strings) you would know that the string will not vibrate much at all. Also, violin strings are a bit larger I think.

when you pluck a violin, it doenst vibrate much because the string is shorter.

has nothing to do with a bow or not

and keep in mind that a violin neck i waaaaay smaller and easier to learn all the "sweet spots".id like to try one myself

[Biblical]

violins also need high action, do fretless guitars

[envenomedcky]

I had a method for removing frets, I used it on my old bass and it worked great. If you have a dremel, put on the grinding attachement, set it on the highest power and grind on the top of your fret, the fret heats up and then you can easily use plyers to pull them out. I didn't damage my fretboard at all, but then again, I took a lot of care to insure I didn't damage the fretboard. You could do that then fill in the slots with something, or you could just remove the whole fretboard and put a blank ebony fretboard on it.

[otgordin]

This isn't what you were asking for, but it could probably be converted into a bolt-on.

Agile Fretless Neck

-Vadim

[Primal]

when you pluck a violin, it doenst vibrate much because the string is shorter.

But if you pluck an open string, it will vibrate longer than if you were fingering the note. Anyway, we are both right is some respects. The string doesn't vibrate long because (1) there are no frets which means that your finger will dampen the strings and (2) the strings are shorter, which means that there is less mass vibrating and therefore less energy in the strings.

I only mentioned a bow because some people may not be familiar with pizzicato technique. Most people associate violins with the sound that a violin makes when played with a bow.

And yes, violin necks are MUCH shorter than guitars. I believe they are somewhere around the 13-14" scale. That reinforces number 2 above about the vibrating mass being less. With a guitar, you will have a longer length of string vibrating so there will be more energy to keep the string vibrating longer.

[ultraman]

anyone here play violin?

[frank falbo]

I suppose you could also grind/sand the frets away so you were left with just tang filling the hole. Then you could sand and polish the board so you'd have silver fret lines. You could use 80 grit on a radius block until you just started to touch the fretboard, then switch to higher grades. Or if you're brave enough, take it to the belt sander for most of the work.

I'm going to try a fretless guitar I just don't know when. I have a few decent necks with outdated headstock shapes around that I could use, or it would be easy enough to make a rear mount truss rod (skunk stripe) neck with no fretboard. I would think you'd want a thicker profile, more "V" shaped neck so you could really squeeze for a cleaner note.

[madcow]

ultraman Posted on Apr 30 2004, 04:55 PM

  QUOTE (Primal @ Apr 29 2004, 03:35 PM)

QUOTE (spirit @ Apr 29 2004, 01:13 PM)

Erm, violins work, don't they? And they don't have frets. 

A violin's strings are played with a bow which keeps the string vibrating. If you have ever heard pizzicato strings (where they pluck the strings) you would know that the string will not vibrate much at all. Also, violin strings are a bit larger I think

violins CAN be played like guitar

[krizalid]

hai... i don't really know much about fretless guitaar... but i'm quite interested with it. emmm... can the fretboard be scalloped after the frets are marked but instead of putting any frets maybe some sawdust to fiil in the place where the fret should be in the first place. can this be done or my imagination is too high?

[skibum5545]

I suppose you could also grind/sand the frets away so you were left with just tang filling the hole.

A guy I know did that on his Warwick Dolphin. Rather pretty with the bell brass lines, but it buzzed like mad....

[asm]

seems to me that it would be alot easier to just pulling off the fretboard and getting one with a nice new wood, rather than fillling all the holes and fret slots with epoxy and leveling it again

???