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Permalink Reply by Brown Water Jerry (Rice) on October 23, 2014 at 4:08am

Sorry for double post, techno challenged. 

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Permalink Reply by Eric Kasten on October 23, 2014 at 5:00am

I fret my guitars but I also play with a slide.  String height is fairly low... just takes a little getting used to with a slide.  Too high and it's difficult to use the frets or takes them further out of tune when depressed.  Here's some examples of fretted guitars that I use the slide on.... www.kasteneric.com (go to guitar section).

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Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on October 23, 2014 at 11:15am

It's a very subjective thing, which is why the height on commercially produced bridges is usually adjustable. You should make the guitar and expect to 'fine tune' the exact height of the bridge last of all. This might take some playing in too.

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Permalink Reply by John Sawyer on October 23, 2014 at 2:25pm

Your title says fretless... did you mean fretted?

The trick is in the floating bridge.  As your action/string height gets higher, you'll stretch the scale length just a bit to compensate.  

There's always that "low enough to finger, high enough to slide" but I normally go 1 quarter high at the first fret, and 2 at the 12th or so.  Sometimes I'm a bit higher, and that's ok, too...

I'm sure one of the experts here will have a better, more precise opinion...

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Permalink Reply by Skeesix on October 27, 2014 at 3:37am

This can be tricky or require some back and forth adjustments until it feels right. I make it a height that plays well for fretting, and then might add a bit more height for slide. Using slightly heavier strings might help too for slide, but then again you don't want them too heavy or it can be hard to fret.

My current setup is the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd strings from a set of electric .012's. The height at the first "fret" is 2/32". The height at the 12th "fret" is 4/32". This frets well, but I feel like the strings are a little floppy. I previously had strings 3,4,and 5 from the same set on there. That worked great for slide, but was hard to fret. So eventually, I'll probably end up somewhere in between on the string thickness, but keep the same height. I think my next experiment will be strings 2, 3 and 4.

My builds all have neck angles now, so they're not "bow shooting height" at the 12th fret. This also makes for easier fretting.

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Permalink Reply by Brown Water Jerry (Rice) on October 27, 2014 at 1:45pm

I have been playing acoustic fretless bass guitar and like it so I thought that playing fretless 3 string cgb would be way cool!

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