Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Luis Andres Indaburu on December 28, 2015 at 1:47pm

Thanks for showing me the way Wayfinder.

I will do as you say.

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Permalink Reply by Moritz Voegeli on January 19, 2016 at 4:35am

Maybe you are on the better side taking an existing guitar as a model: the result will be more exact than the values of a fret calculator to be marked on the fretboard. If you find one with a big scale length the better, because you can shorten your template as you like: put the nut at the position of any of the frets and calculate the distance to the bridge twice the distance from the nut to the actual 12th fret. Do you have cheap e-guitars around? Yamahas are generally fretted quite exactly.

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on January 19, 2016 at 7:05am

As he stated he is making an unfretted guitar,it doesn't matter,but i certainly would be inclined to go with wayfinders suggestion re a calculater rather than trying to transfer 3mm frets from an existing tapered neck to a new neck and trying to find the centre of the fret.It seems to have a lot of potential variance likely,a proven calculater,used well should have all marked within a pencil line thickness

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Permalink Reply by ChickenboneJohn on January 19, 2016 at 6:27am

Don't be afraid to turn down work if you feel you are out of your depth. Sometimes customers will ask me for unfeasible or impractical things, and I tell them straight that it can't be done..or at least I won't do it!  There's no shame in being honest, and sometimes it reflects better on you to admit you don't know if you can do it, especially if you can point them in the right direction of someone who can.  

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Permalink Reply by Moritz Voegeli on January 19, 2016 at 9:44am

To come back to your question about neck length: the cbg resonators I have seen were relatively short scale (23 to 24 inch) and were tuned with high string tension (about ,026, .017, .013 for GDG tuning). Other opinions around?

To the question about fretting: a fret calculator is mathematically exact, but every luthier I know even for low action shortens the distance from nut to first fret for about half a millimeter, as is done with a correctly fretted fretboard.

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Permalink Reply by Luis Andres Indaburu on January 19, 2016 at 10:19am

Hello guys, thank you so much for all the help. Finally what I did was take all of my prototypes to the customer, had him check each one, and he chose a fretless cigar box guitar with a paint can lid resonator.  It will be a DAD . I will choose a 24 inch neck.  Dont think I am ready to fret yet. I still have to do like ten more ukes or so.

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Permalink Reply by Kigar on January 19, 2016 at 3:49pm

To re-sidetrack the topic (you started it!) fretting is not super hard.  Ukes are a good first try as they are flat and can be pressed in with a vise or C clamp backed with blocks of wood.  I bought the gitty saw and some frets and it came out ok.  The frets were sized for a tapered uke neck so only some minor filing was needed.  The uke I did is one of the recent posts in the uke forum.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on January 19, 2016 at 9:04pm

Dobro's usually have a 25" scale.

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