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Fender Fanned Fret?
- Thread starter codycon96
- Start date
Fender's largest market is the 'traditionally-minded' bassist, but I'm sure that there would be some players willing to try a multi-scale offering.
Not all quite true. Multi-scale instruments have been around since medieval times. Ralph did adopt it to guitar and patent it. The patent is from 1988 and lasted until 2008. The history goes something like: In the early 90s Ralph and Sheldon met, vibed out on fanned frets & agreed that Sheldon would build basses and Ralph would mostly focus on guitars. They are friends and Sheldon has paid royalties after the patent expired.
If you have ever played a Canadian Dingwall then you understand that Dingwall has engineered and designed a whole lot of very thoughtful improvements on every one of his bass designs. There are so many amazing improvements on their Super Series compared to the original Fenders.
It is the total package from Dingwall. There are some companies that seem to slap a fanned fret neck and hardware on one of their normal designs and you can tell. I think IF Fender built a fanned fret bass that it wouldn't play as well as my Dingwalls.
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Even if Fender put fanned frets on any of their basses they still won't sound or play like a Dingwall.
What Dingwall does is combine carefully crafted parts (like the short shaft tuners) and construction details like the layered wood. Fender in all likelihood would only want to take a P or a J and change the frets.
What Dingwall does is combine carefully crafted parts (like the short shaft tuners) and construction details like the layered wood. Fender in all likelihood would only want to take a P or a J and change the frets.
It's smart engineering: Past his interesting, layered bodies and bespoke pickups/electronics, the real triumph is with the fanned frets, essentially each string is offered a more optimal scale length and this allows for a 37"+ B-string in a manageable overall length.
Brilliant.
If a Fender gets produced with fanned frets, it'll most likely first come from the Charvel or Jackson brand. This vibe is not Fender's thing. I see fanned frets as a cool niche but not the norm for the future.
I had a fanned fret Ibanez bass in my studio for a few weeks. It wasn't impossible to play it, but it wasn't pleasant either, although I got used to it after a few days.
IMHO I don't see any real need for it except for visual and unnecessary different.
IMHO I don't see any real need for it except for visual and unnecessary different.
If they did, I wouldn't be interested. I am glad Fender doesn't change their models much, that way we still have and will continue to have the classic Ps and Js (and Strats and Teles and Jags) easily available. If I want modern, I don't go to Fender.
That said, every once in a while Fender tries something new (for a short while, at least). So yes, I can see them doing a fanned fret experiment at some point.
That said, every once in a while Fender tries something new (for a short while, at least). So yes, I can see them doing a fanned fret experiment at some point.
I visited a shop intending to buy one if I liked it. After playing an Ibanez FF version I was not enticed to take it home. In fairness I have to say that the pickups - Bartolinis probably prompted half of my lack of enthusiasm for it. Instead I bought a conventionally fretted SR655. The Nordstrands won me. I haven't gone looking for another FF since then. Playing it didn't grab me enough to want one anymore. My curiosity is satisfied.
Try a Dingwall. Each string has the perfect tension, and ergonomically its much more comfortable for your wrist. Once you get used to it it's much easier to play. I had a dingwall D-roc for a while. The only reason I got rid of it was because the neck was a bit too wide for me (I have a dead bone in my wrist so a 1.5 inch nut width is as wide as I can go)
Fanned frets are a small niche in our market. Fender has all the orders it can handle serving the rest of the market - their Marketing folks are busy with trying to come up with names for the same exact product that they've been selling for decades. You can be assured that, if fanned frets ever become a big enough part of the market, Fender will be there with theirs, and also that some part(s) of that introduction will be awkward.
Changing string length (while keeping constant tension) is one approach to covering a wide range of frequencies, but the string gauges still have to do most of the heavy lifting.
On a 5 string bass, the B string is tuned to less than a third of the frequency of the G string. If you start with a 34 inch G string, the B string for the same tension with the same diameter string would be 108.6 inches long (that's a bit over 9 feet).
Dingwalls have an 8.8 percent change in scale length. To compensate for that change in scale length, a diameter change of 4.3 percent (there's a square root involved in the math) is necessary. I'm happy with 130 gauge strings on my 5s' (I like low tension). On a 37 inch scale, I could go with a 125 (the math says 124.6, if you want to split hairs) for the same tension. Not a big difference, really. The key is no matter what scale length you pick, you have to design the string to work well with that, and (unfortunately) commercially available 5 string sets fail at that.
If you're looking to Physics to solve the floppy B string problem (forgive me for introducing Science and a lifetime of Engineering to the problem), you can do much more with the right string gauge than you can with scale length on a practical instrument. Floppy B strings are a string problem.
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buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
Fender sells what they can sell a lot of. The fanned fret market is pretty small, and aren't exactly traditional people.
