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Permalink Reply by Tom T on April 22, 2015 at 9:44am

Interesting idea. Is this in lieu of a capo since there are not frets?

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Permalink Reply by Goldsmithexile on April 22, 2015 at 10:52am

Doesnt Johnny Lowebow use something like that? I think I saw him on a video moving a sliding round bar closer up to the tuning heads while still playing

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Permalink Reply by ce24 on April 22, 2015 at 11:45am

yep...no frets just fret slots so it slides very easy. This is my second CBG so I'm still learning but if the action was equal all the way up the neck you ould goto any key. but that isn't the case with this guitar....I'll have to lower the bridge for that to work on this one but it works great and it's not so high that I have to retune from the strings being stretched by raising them just a hair. Just slide to the key you want.....I don't know of Johnny Lowebow....yet...;)

cheers ce24

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Permalink Reply by Goldsmithexile on April 23, 2015 at 11:05am

I just watched Johnny's video again earlier, he has what looks like a piece of bone or plastic, about the size of a finger, and he moves it up and down between the strings and the fret board. He has a unique approach to getting a groove....

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Permalink Reply by Dane Donato on April 24, 2015 at 8:37am

The problem with this is that you would have to have multiple frets and fret positions. If you could move the nut up the neck, then the scale changes as you move the nut, I would think. Easier would be a capo, or learn chords in all 12 (or as many as you want to learn) keys. 

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on April 24, 2015 at 10:10pm

Zackly. It's called a capo (short for capotasto, in case anyone cares, meaning "head of the touch, or finger, board"). The capo is by definition a movable nut. It works on both fretted and unfretted necks. Put one on a fretted neck, and you have instant zero fret, changed scale length, and another key signature. Same for an unfretted neck, with the added possible advantage of microtones. Then there's ultra-kewl devices like the Spider Capo, which allows for alternate tunings when applied to a git in standard tuning. I'm still learning my way around with both my 6-string and 4-string versions.

http://www.spidercapo.com

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Permalink Reply by Dane Donato on April 24, 2015 at 10:59pm

You can also look to the tie-on frets they used on lutes and early guitars. Gut was one material used. You could use nylon fishing line today. Fast changes would not be easy, but possible, maybe before the next song. 

And I was just reading about a 19th century guitar that used a very complex system of multiple color-coded movable frets to give the player tempering through all keys. It never caught on as a viable commercial system. 

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on April 24, 2015 at 11:22pm

Being a musical moron,and i get the capo concept,but surely,with the addition of a capo,all ensuing frets are compromised re intonation,or am i more moronic than i thought,as in 'new' nut is no longer relevant  to 1/2 scale at 12 th fret,does the 13 th become a 'pure' octave? Iprobably should have just done the mathematics,but it may help someone else

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Curley on April 24, 2015 at 11:30pm

If the action is too high then bringing the string down to the fret can indeed mess with your intonation, other than that the ratios between string length and fret distances remain the same.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on April 24, 2015 at 11:36pm

Thus the inherent kewlness of a capo. But darryl raises an interesting point...gonna hafta go sketch this up with the StewMac calculator handy, cuz I know some folks (that term again!) are visual.

Back later.

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Permalink Reply by Tom T on April 24, 2015 at 11:44pm

You're no moron, Darryl. I intuitively knew that the frets worked themselves out when you shortened the scale length with a capo. but I couldn't help myself. I pulled out my Excel fret calculator and shortened the scale length by the distance from the nut to the first fret. Sure enough, the location of the "new" first fret calculated to be exactly the distance from the old first fret to the old second fret. It all works out.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on April 25, 2015 at 12:23am

So we're back to capo, then? ;-)

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