A lined fretless idea

[Bass Thunder]

How many people play fretless?
How many people have had to replace an ebony fingerboard?

I'm thinking it's a pretty small percentage of replacements. Maybe 0.000000012% especially if someone has at least 2 basses to share the load.

I think the vanishing ebony fingerboard is mostly an urban legend.

Has anyone seen a fretless worn down to the maple neck material?

 

[Thunderthumbs73]

How many people play fretless?
How many people have had to replace an ebony fingerboard?

I'm thinking it's a pretty small percentage of replacements. Maybe 0.000000012% especially if someone has at least 2 basses to share the load.

I think the vanishing ebony fingerboard is mostly an urban legend.

Has anyone seen a fretless worn down to the maple neck material?

I tend to think wearing down an ebony fretboard is like trying to wear a string groove into a bowling ball, or harder than that, even. But I could be wrong...

 

[Arx]

I'm fairly certain that it is the perpendicular motion causing the fractional string wear I see on the bloodwood fingerboards I've sent out in the past. The worn spots are always wider than the string, and right at the position markers, which indicates perpendicular motion, to me.

Yeah, I'm just asking, I can see marks on the board of my fretless and they're wider then the string too, but mostly on the E string, and I never bend strings intentionally. The marks are fairly wide too, probably wider than I ever bend the strings when I mash them out of place.

I figured they're from when I'm playing without an amp, so I'm really beating on it, and the E string rattles on the board.

There's virtually no wear though, I'm just talking about marks where the CA I coated the board with has been buffed a tad by the strings.

Seems to me that the first place showing wear, would probably be the place I'd be getting significant wear if I'd played for years with roundwounds.

 

[Brad Johnson]

Are you sure it's vibrato that chews it up, not abrasion of the strings vibrating on the the "Mwah Zone"?

Yeah, pretty sure. With my action as low as it is, if it were merely string motion, I'd have wear. I don't.

As far as the width of the wear mentioned later, think about it... most people don't finger the string to the board in exactly one place, they may press upwards or downwards across the board.

 

[Arx]

Yeah, that's why I mentioned it, because it seems to be wider than even my clumsiest fingering.

That said, I don't have any significant wear yet, so may be a bad example. Even if the marks are from the stings vibrating, which I'm fairly sure they are, my assumption that the wear would continue in a simlar fashion could be wrong.

 

[Bocete]

Now, to expand the fretless-with-steel-frets idea

You could sand frets entirely where the strings would touch the fretboard, and leave them be in between strings. It shouldn't be done with regular frets because the part that goes into the fretboard is very thin and might break if it held the fret in one piece on its own. It could be done with those frets I suggested earlier, however.

So, if you were to look at these frets from the nut, they would go (for a four-stringer)

 __     ____     ____     ____     __
/  \___/    \___/    \___/    \___/  \

It would be a fretless I proposed earlier, but with one major difference: you can feel the frets with your fingers while playing, but they dont get in the string's way.

It would be the perfect solution for those who need fretless, but struggle with intonation when not looking, for example.

The only issue I see is that you can't bend the strings, but no need to, it's fretless.

What do you think about this? And how could it be done?

You could just take a sheet of 1mm thick fret metal (nickel? don't know), and drill 1mm recesses in the already sanded neck, put these in and sand some more where the string should touch the fretboard. It would takse several days to sand all those small spots, but maybe there is a better way?

 

[Arx]

Now, to expand the fretless-with-steel-frets idea

Let's say those sub-frets are about 1mm thick. Then you could do whats in the picture. It would be a fretless I proposed earlier, but with one major difference: you can feel the frets with your fingers while playing, but they dont get in the string's way.

It would be the perfect solution for those who need fretless, but struggle with intonation when not looking, for example.

The only issue I see is that you can't bend the strings, but no need to, it's fretless.

What do you think about this? And how could it be done?

You could just take a sheet of 1mm thick fret metal (nickel? don't know), and drill 1mm recesses in the already sanded neck, put these in and sand some more where the string should touch the fretboard. It would takse several days to sand all those small spots, but maybe there is a better way?

Do you know that normal fret material isn't flat? They're normally made of nickel silver, which is actually a copper/nickel (+sometimes zinc) alloy.

I'm not sure if I understand now.. You're thinking of just having partial frets for your fingers to feel, but sanded flat where the strings are?

-Nick

 

[Bocete]

Do you know that normal fret material isn't flat? They're normally made of nickel silver, which is actually a copper/nickel (+sometimes zinc) alloy.

As for the fret material, its unimportant for this concept. However, if there are no sheets of nickel silver, you could just go stainless steel.

I'm not sure if I understand now.. You're thinking of just having partial frets for your fingers to feel, but sanded flat where the strings are?

-Nick

Right! That is the better way to put it; I struggle with English so I guess I'm hard to understand.

 

[Arx]

As for the fret material, its unimportant for this concept. However, if there are no sheets of nickel silver, you could just go stainless steel.

Right! That is the better way to put it; I struggle with English so I guess I'm hard to understand.

well, stainless will probably be easier to find.

As far as the overall idea goes, I don't see why it wouldn't work.

 

[liltommyg]

Aria Pro 2 had these versions available in Ireland in the early nineties and if we get them
that means the rest of the world has them since the mid eighties, the fretlines seemed to be brass or bronze in colour and were as wide as normal ffrets but flattened and sunk level into the fretboard.

 

[Arx]

Ordinary brass would probably be hard enough, and quite easy to get, though it does tarnish easily.

 

[scottyd]

Wood moves metal does not. Sooner or later the wood will either contract or expand to where the wood surface is not level with the metal.

 

[chris_nairn]

I tend to think wearing down an ebony fretboard is like trying to wear a string groove into a bowling ball, or harder than that, even. But I could be wrong...

Ebony tends to pit and chip with wear. It also wears in the way that is being discussed in this thread. In my fretless basses, you can see the round wound pattern from fretted type vibrato, bending and presumably playing hard as well as pits. I use both types of vibrato for different sounds. Also, I am trying to learn to play with a lighter touch to reduce wear these days.

One of my basses got so bad that in some spots, the note would not sound. It would just sort of go BLONKK! I lightly sanded the entire board and put flats on. It is an improvement but really needs to be replaned or have some ebony dust glued in.

I knew a guy with a Music Man fretless years ago and he had worn deep grooves under the strings. It was still playable but it seemed to make his intonation suffer a great deal. I think it was a rosewood fingerboard (or possibly pao ferro)?