soft frets

gryhund666 · #1 07-19-2010, 10:18 PM

I'm a new bass player and a person who likes to take things apart to see how they work. To this end I bought a used yamaha RBX 200 and completely took it apart in order to learn about truss adjustment etc. I defretted it and thought that soft frets (I read that at one point in time guitar frets were pieces of string!) could give the cool fretless sound while still allowing you the less precise finger placement options like a fretted bass. Off to the races.
I first tried thin pieces of silicone. I pressed the silicone between two hard flat surfaces, then when it dried I cut a rectangular shape out and glued it to where the fret went. The silicon was too soft and allowed the string to be pushed all the way to the fretboard and interfere with other frets (I only did the 4 lowest note frets) but the sound (when it wasn't being interfered with) was encouraging. Next I tried flat nylon shoe strings tied at the fret lines. This gave an absolutely astonishing bad look (I shoulda taken a pic, you'd have laughed) but played and sounded OK. I think with engineering to get the correct shoelace/string height this could work. My last attempt worked the best. I used some moleskin, the type used for blister management on your feet. This was the best yet, thin, sticky (easy to apply), and gave good sound.

So, I throw this out to the world (any manufactures interested?). Soft frets may be something. Any other experimenters out there?
I sure had fun doing this.
Gryhund666

walterw · #2 07-20-2010, 12:16 AM

some guys swear by regular frets that are just really small, like mandolin frets, to get closer to a fretless tone.

early instruments (baroque era maybe?) would use the same gut that the strings were made of to tie around the neck for movable "frets".

with modern metal strings i don't see it holding up; maybe black nylon tapewound strings on top of classical guitar nylon string material as tied-on movable frets would last a little while. tied-on frets would make for an unpleasant back-of-neck feel though, wouldn't they?

gryhund666 · #3 07-20-2010, 03:32 PM

oh yeah, the tied on frets were visually unappealing (there is a BIG understatement) and a pain to play. I only did it as an experiment. Sounded OK though.
If it wouldn't weaken the neck too much I suppose holes could be drilled just where the fret should be and soft fret material could be 'woven' in a through the hole-over the fret position, thru the hole etc. pattern. I have not tried this, it would be a bit tricky to set up correctly.