in my vise. It's more of a mushroom shaped causes the pieces to slide out of alignment. Other Materials. we multiply 45 cm by 0.5 raised to 1/12. The edge of the fretboard needs to feel Depending on the instrument and the style of music, the musician may pluck, strum or bow one or more strings with the hand that is not fretting the notes. Here is a good illustration of exactly what we are talking about: Here is a close up shot of the top part of the image above: The idea behind fretboard radius is to have the fretboard more consistently match the natural curvature of a human hand. This is called stopping the strings. With this type of board, the radius actually changes as you travel up the board. The ultimate way of determining the source of a buzz and detuning problem is to measure the levelness of the frets. I had a strip of wood on either side of the fretboard that I was cutting, and I cut each slot If A few modern luthiers have used lightweight, non-wood materials such as carbon-fiber in their fingerboards.[3]. Once one end of the fret is secure in the slot, it's relatively easy to work the previous operation when you push "=" again. In fret dressing, a luthier levels and polishes the frets, and crowns (carefully rounds and shapes) the ends and edges. The player must first become accustomed to not actually touching the fingerboard. I gave all the frets one more working over in the vise. Here is a quick check to make sure that the radius set at the bridge is consistent with the fretboard radius: With the guitar tuned up to pitch, measure the height of each string from the bottom of the string to the top of the fretboard at the twelfth fret. The "scooped out" nature of scalloped fingerboards creates a number of changes in the way the guitar plays. [2] Not having frets carefully and properly aligned with the fingerboard can cause severe intonation issues and constant detuning. On six-string guitars and bass guitars, markers are typically single smallish dots on the fingerboard and on its side that indicate the 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th frets—and the octaves of those positions higher up the neck. Bowed string instruments usually have curved fingerboards, to allow the player to bow single strings. I cut that slot with a 3/4" router bit on my router table. is better than hammering them in. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. Typically, the fingerboard is a long plank with a rectangular profile. The bridge end of the fingerboard has a larger radius to make soloing more comfortable and prevent "noting out"[5] ("fretting out"), in which a string comes in contact with a higher fret during bends. To play the instrument, a musician presses strings down to the fingerboard to change the vibrating length, changing the pitch. Also, since the grains of the woods are different, it can make the fretboard look either smooth or rigid. I should have used a harder piece of exotic wood to squish the frets in with. Without scallops, the guitarist must play microtones by sliding the string sideways on the fret. were quite hard to get in. the frets so that slight damage on the edge gets cut off. I found a scrap of cocobolo at my local wood store just thick enough to be the fretboard and long enough to also be the front face of the guitar head. Our fingers are not perfectly straight. Frets may be fixed, as on a guitar or mandolin, or movable, as on a lute. By only squeezing it in at the end, before it actually goes in the slot, or at least that was the case with the All parts of the fingerboard have some curvature, but the fingerboard shape is not strictly a cone. What we end up with is low action, but the guitar still just does not seem quite right. To play the instrument, a musician presses strings down to the fingerboard to change the vibrating length, changing the pitch. This should give you the The length, width, thickness and density of a fingerboard can affect timbre. Position markers are also sometimes repeated on the edge of the fingerboard for easy viewing. to use it as a cutting guide as I cut the fret slots with my dozuki saw. That is, if the nut is at 45 cm, The process of "scalloping" a fingerboard well, if done by hand, is tedious work, usually done by careful filing of wood between the frets, and requires a large investment of time. Generally, luthiers scallop fingerboards with a special milling machine that has 22 or 24 (according to neck dimensions and number of frets) wood cutting tools. to stain the board black. With all the discussions about what fretboard radius does for the playability of a guitar we thought it would be a good idea to include a setup tip that will benefit all players. This is an idea that definitely seems to be gaining some popularity as more players experience the advantages. the next fret position. A double dot or some other variation marks the 12th fret and 24th frets. the frets in by about 30 degrees. The method I ended up using was to hold one end of the fret, and squish the This reduces the prominence of upper harmonics, giving a more ethereal tone.[1]. I also hand-sanded the edges to help round the ends of the frets and the edge I may have overdone the squeezing. Over-oil a fretboard and you risk loosening the frets by turning the wood surrounding the tangs into mush. Though the measurements are commonly found on just about every guitar spec sheet, it is rarely explained what these measurements actually mean. That way, I could be sure Most of us obsess quite a bit over the height of our action, however, we often fail to make sure that the curvature of the strings matches that of the fretboard. fretboard would look much better. into the neck and cut them off to stick out about 1.5 mm from the surface. Basically as the radius grows larger, the section gets progressively flatter. Frets let the player stop the string consistently in the same place, which enables the musician to play notes with the correct intonation. On modern guitars, frets are typically made of metal. Making the Fretboard. The scalloped fretboard also facilitates the rapid, microtonal variation that is important in Indian music, as exemplified by classical Indian Sitar music. The math for working out until the saw cut into the strip on either side. This is called stoppingthe strings. Variations on the standard dot shape can make a guitar more distinctive. For my instrument, the scale length came to 45 cm.