Maybe put the groove behind the fret slot to avoid intonation hassles? Also what about adding a metal inlay flush with the surface of the fretboard at the leading edge of the groove? Might make for a cleaner "fretted note"?
@@Techead78 I remember Crimson doing a custom build with stepped fretboard that used the edge of each step as the fret. Loved the concept but it was kinda fugly and this is far more elegant.
Yeah, the ratios are all wrong because the grooves are out by 2mm so it’s just going to get increasingly sharper the further up the neck you go. No amount of fiddling with the nut is going to help fix the intonation issue. Putting the groove behind the slot would have been a good idea
adjust the milling so that the entire 4 to 6 mm of removed material is on the low side of the net and then the intonation should remain unphased. very unique idea.
I dig the idea. Has a killer vibe. It pulls off sounding like a satar with your playing style matched with the grooved frets and light fuzz delay. "Always create, always inovate"
Nice idea, reminds me of the Bond Electraglide with its carbon fibre stepped fretboard - no frets, just sawtooth ridges. I often thought it would have been more unique if the ridges had been shallower to sound more like a fretless. Mark, perhaps you could try a 3D printed 'Ridgeboard' (if that's not already a RTM - I'm having it lol!)? Keep up the innovation! EDIT. Thinking about it, a very shallow sawtooth (0.5mm?) followed by slim scalloped grooves (2-5mm) could make an interesting combination to make a 'fretted' guitar feel like a fretless?
I actually think that would work way better on a bass, now you mention it. The "fretted" tone would be more acceptable imo. I wonder how long before the edges of the slots wear-down with playing?
As soon as I saw you'd centred the slots on the original slots I said "Noooo" at the screen because I knew it would give you intonation issues. I assumed you were going to keep the original slot as the leading edge and cut the slots back towards the headstock.
I also thought of the Bond Electraglide when I saw this. But that might work for having frets without fret wire, but maybe not the same feeling of being fretless. Another fretboard without fret wire is Jonathan Wilson’s “Violglide”, which is a scalloped fretboard with no fret wire, but with a radius needed for his bowed guitars. As a builder of bowed guitars myself, I’d probably want to do something more like the scalloped design. One of my goals for next year is to see if I can make them out of ceramic by casting one that I’ve already made from wood and wire.
A neat idea. A metal liner within the slots that would fret the strings pressed into them more sharply than the wooden edge would yield a brighter sound more like a fretted guitar. Probably the edges will erode quickly without it.
FYI, the Marco patent was granted in 2001 and expired in 2021. Its a good simple patent, but part of getting a patent is that the protection doesn't last forever.
I had the same thought. I'll give matey the benefit of the doubt for not crediting the concept. It's quite possible he believed it to be an original idea.
SUPER interesting idea and it actually worked! I don't know much about guitar stuff but this might be something for me to experiment with by making a custom cigar box guitar. It will save the trouble of learning how to make frets! 😅 Not to mention CBG's are great for playing slide so it seems a perfect fit!
@@terryenglish7132 The bridge side edge of a slot is the intonation point for a slot. Your finger goes on the nut side of that edge - more or less over the slot itself.
So just a thought here, I grew up playing violin (obviously a different instrument but the concept should be the same in theory). You can fix your intonation with just the placement of your fingers being slightly more forward. Fretless instruments are mega particular, since your finger is the fret essentially. What i would do is tune the guitar to 432hz A instead of 440hz A (concert pitch). Changing that would give you a bit more wiggle room and probably give a more warm sound. I had a Harley Benton 6 string fretless bass for a little bit and I found that it had better tonal qualities when I tuned it that way because of it being a more short scaled instrument. The vibrato becomes a lot more vocal too if you do a more side to side motion as opposed to bending the string like a normal guitar but like you said, this is basically a different instrument so you have to change how you play it. Overall it's a cool concept, I would love to eventually get a fretless guitar myself because honestly they just sound better and are more expressive if you know how to make it talk. I have relatively perfect pitch from C to C# myself, thats why I gravitate to 432hz, those microtones make all the difference if you can hear them 🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻
Dude! This is such a wacky idea, I Love it! 3 suggestions: 1) Why not just make them true temperament at that point? You would need to do the math but it would come without the cost of the frets 2) what if instead of widening the slots, you taper/round off the nonleading edge? That way you don't have to remove as much material but there would be a stronger tactile indication of where you're at. 3) I think a shim could help with the buzz issue. Bonus, what if you made the fretboard out of aluminum or just removed the fretboard altogether and cut out blocks of metal and just left the "negative space" where the frets would normally be?
I was literally just thinking about this a week ago and randomly found this. I made a comment on a different channel wondering what would happen if ....this. I wonder if that's why YT showed me lol the A.I. is powerful here.
I’ve been thinking about something like this for a guitar designed for playing slide. Hadn’t really thought about leaving the slots unfilled though. That’s a great idea
dude get really wild, have the slots cut out with the true tremperment fret pattern, it would be less work then installing those squiggle frets. you could switch to a stop bar tailpiece, you would have to really shim the neck, but would raise the strings high off the body
This is a fantastic idea, and I think having the perfect intonation as a reference point would open so many compositional possibilities with the fretless aspect.
Very cool. Been wondering what you've been up to. As mentioned elsewhere, shifting the slots towards the nut would preclude the need to move the nut and saddles. At first I was surprised it rings out clearly, but it's similar to the fingerboard on a Bond Electraglide. As for hitting the pickguard, think of it as your own Floyd Rose speed guide. I put "depth pickguards" on all my experimental builds now. They do take a bit of getting used to until you adjust (IE improve) your picking, but they _will_ make you faster.
My only question is whether or not milling out frets and taking actual wood outta the neck/fingerboard would affect the necks ability to transfer vibration. Might lose some sustain with a mod like this, but other than that, great freakin idea!
If the whole idea is to play where the frets are supposed to be, you're not really fretting and it sounds more like a sitar than a fretted neck. The semi compromised solution for that was created by Vigier: instead of making a wooden fingerboard harder, they have a proprietary metal alloy which replaces the fingerboard. In a sense, it's not really a fretless, but one giant fret. And since the grooves are fixed, you can't move the intonation point like you can do in fretless.
How about a saw toothed or stepped pattern to generate relief clearance for the string to be tipping up and away from the fretboard "above" (closer to the bridge) it. You would almost certainly lose the fretless feel though.
ahh, the concave fret guitar, making a home for the finger gunk xD really cool tho, id probs buy a high-end one that thats polished up with like the intonation and string play dialed in, tougher fretboard and all that, so ye good job.
No more paying for fretwork in the future requires stainless steel...or no frets at all...? If the big 3 adopt this fretless concept...will they charge more even though less components are used? IE; No fret material and less fretboard material🤣🤣😊 Interesting concept. Thanks for this experiment 😎👍👍
Would be interesting to see how an opposite setup would behave. Use a scalloped fretboard with raised “frets”. You still wouldn’t need metal frets and the notes would be easier to fret because you can play it how you’d play a normal guitar. Actually, I might use that myself. Patent pending. Patent pending.
You'd definitely want to epoxy a fingerboard like that, or machine it from aluminum or Richlite or something, otherwise "fret wear" would likely be an issue.
@@normbarrows2 The best option would be Vigier's i-Metal alloy which they use on their Surfretter fretless instruments, however, nobody knows its composition.
@@BrunodeSouzaLino Yeah - no info on their website about "I-metal". From the photos it's probably some steel or aluminum based proprietary alloy, perhaps coated. Whatever it is, it has to be hard to withstand string wear. I've done a few fretless builds, but I don't like the tonal difference you get on fretlesses between fretted and open string notes, so I prefer fretted for both playing and building.
I had glass frets made and put them on a one piece Bubinga neck. Too much of a good thing. That sweet glass slide sound, but w crappy bass and treble and a weak sound stage.
@@BrunodeSouzaLino I used the smallest glass rod that was at my local glass shop . I had them round the frets ends like the new ball end frets. I laid out the fret positions w lines using a pen. A little super glue on the line, then place the fret. The fret acts like a lens and turns blue like the ink line when in place. I had to sand the rods flat after they were in place. The glass sawed the string in half after a few bends since it met the string at a single point !
This is something truly original, great work. Keep going. Maybe try cutting the wider slot going BACK from the original fret position and then the bridge wouldn't need to move (nor the nut).
'interesting' ...i always thought that the purpose of the frets are define the perfect pitch of the sound no matter how far or close of the fret you're pressing. However, while you're playing fretless i was under the impression that the should press right on the spot where the fret used to be....i see your fingers are pressing in between removed frets....strange...
FFS dude, why didn't you play with a clean signal? Are you trying to showcase the fretboard project or your freaking pedal board? You can barely hear the difference between this and a regular fretted neck...
You get both depending on fretting effort and location. solid fretting behind the intonation points gets you fretted behavior and tone. Fretless style fretting between the slots gives you fretless behavior and tone - and microtones between the standard fretted notes.
You never mentioned the Marco Basses patent (recently expired or not) at any point in this video. You presented this as a new idea/proof of your own concept experiment which it isn't. It is disrespectful for you to say you just knocked off a little trial of this idea to see if it would even work when another person invented/patented/produced and sold several variations of this exact idea for years. If the patent has expired that means you would be able to produce and sell necks with this adaptation or to innovate with this as a starting point. What you did was to make a video claiming this to be your new idea which is "patently" not true
Never knew there was a patent. Never intended to sell necks. I definitely tried very hard to google the concept which is virtually impossible. Trying to search for "slots", "grooves" or "fretless" pulls up the same old stuff.
while i admit this man is creative and very detailed orientated, I must say im hardly surprised that this same guy has a leftist eat the rich guitar and then as he does on every single video play electronic music completely devoid of any and all guitar !! Bro figure your shit out are ypu a guitar builder or are you a engineer who is piggy backing on guitar niche. great work but your kinda saying quite part out loud here
I'd be keen to hear what it sounds like straight & dry - no effects or reverb - before anything else
Maybe put the groove behind the fret slot to avoid intonation hassles? Also what about adding a metal inlay flush with the surface of the fretboard at the leading edge of the groove? Might make for a cleaner "fretted note"?
I agree. Neat idea 😊
@@Techead78 I remember Crimson doing a custom build with stepped fretboard that used the edge of each step as the fret.
Loved the concept but it was kinda fugly and this is far more elegant.
Yeah, the ratios are all wrong because the grooves are out by 2mm so it’s just going to get increasingly sharper the further up the neck you go. No amount of fiddling with the nut is going to help fix the intonation issue. Putting the groove behind the slot would have been a good idea
adjust the milling so that the entire 4 to 6 mm of removed material is on the low side of the net and then the intonation should remain unphased. very unique idea.
I dig the idea.
Has a killer vibe.
It pulls off sounding like a satar with your playing style matched with the grooved frets and light fuzz delay.
"Always create, always inovate"
Nice idea, reminds me of the Bond Electraglide with its carbon fibre stepped fretboard - no frets, just sawtooth ridges. I often thought it would have been more unique if the ridges had been shallower to sound more like a fretless. Mark, perhaps you could try a 3D printed 'Ridgeboard' (if that's not already a RTM - I'm having it lol!)? Keep up the innovation!
EDIT. Thinking about it, a very shallow sawtooth (0.5mm?) followed by slim scalloped grooves (2-5mm) could make an interesting combination to make a 'fretted' guitar feel like a fretless?
Stepped fretboards are common in East Asian classical instruments, probably where the guitar ideas come from
I actually think that would work way better on a bass, now you mention it. The "fretted" tone would be more acceptable imo. I wonder how long before the edges of the slots wear-down with playing?
Be well suited to an aluminum fretboard
@@ReallyBadJuJuor carbon fiber.
DUDE... this is awesome!!! I absolutely love how your brain works my friend 😁
As soon as I saw you'd centred the slots on the original slots I said "Noooo" at the screen because I knew it would give you intonation issues. I assumed you were going to keep the original slot as the leading edge and cut the slots back towards the headstock.
I think that an aluminum fretboard might work well for this.
Or carbon fiber
I was just thinking that the fretboard is going to get chewed up.
@@MashaT22 carbon fiber is a bit soft if you're using standard nickel wound guitar strings. It'd chew the board up as you used it.
Vigier make one of those.
@@benzakonium They are still one of the most innovative brands out there.
I also thought of the Bond Electraglide when I saw this. But that might work for having frets without fret wire, but maybe not the same feeling of being fretless. Another fretboard without fret wire is Jonathan Wilson’s “Violglide”, which is a scalloped fretboard with no fret wire, but with a radius needed for his bowed guitars. As a builder of bowed guitars myself, I’d probably want to do something more like the scalloped design. One of my goals for next year is to see if I can make them out of ceramic by casting one that I’ve already made from wood and wire.
Such a cool idea! I like the way your mind works sir
A neat idea. A metal liner within the slots that would fret the strings pressed into them more sharply than the wooden edge would yield a brighter sound more like a fretted guitar. Probably the edges will erode quickly without it.
I've been wondering about this for a while, very cool concept, glad it works !
Marco basses has patent for fret grooves I believe. Know they have had concept in production for years.
FYI, the Marco patent was granted in 2001 and expired in 2021. Its a good simple patent, but part of getting a patent is that the protection doesn't last forever.
I had the same thought. I'll give matey the benefit of the doubt for not crediting the concept. It's quite possible he believed it to be an original idea.
Very cool and fun idea! Reminds me that I want to convert one of my bass guitars to fretless
SUPER interesting idea and it actually worked! I don't know much about guitar stuff but this might be something for me to experiment with by making a custom cigar box guitar. It will save the trouble of learning how to make frets! 😅 Not to mention CBG's are great for playing slide so it seems a perfect fit!
wow very cool...i want one
Looks really cool too! Cheers Dave
This is a really cool idea, and I think it has a lot of potential. I would love to try to play an instrument like this
Brilliant idea. I wonder if rather than centering the grooves on the fret slot, on your next iteration, use fretslot as the front of the FretGroove.
The edge farthest from the the bridge would be the fret stand in
@@terryenglish7132 The bridge side edge of a slot is the intonation point for a slot. Your finger goes on the nut side of that edge - more or less over the slot itself.
So just a thought here, I grew up playing violin (obviously a different instrument but the concept should be the same in theory). You can fix your intonation with just the placement of your fingers being slightly more forward. Fretless instruments are mega particular, since your finger is the fret essentially. What i would do is tune the guitar to 432hz A instead of 440hz A (concert pitch). Changing that would give you a bit more wiggle room and probably give a more warm sound. I had a Harley Benton 6 string fretless bass for a little bit and I found that it had better tonal qualities when I tuned it that way because of it being a more short scaled instrument. The vibrato becomes a lot more vocal too if you do a more side to side motion as opposed to bending the string like a normal guitar but like you said, this is basically a different instrument so you have to change how you play it. Overall it's a cool concept, I would love to eventually get a fretless guitar myself because honestly they just sound better and are more expressive if you know how to make it talk. I have relatively perfect pitch from C to C# myself, thats why I gravitate to 432hz, those microtones make all the difference if you can hear them 🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻
Dude! This is such a wacky idea, I Love it! 3 suggestions:
1) Why not just make them true temperament at that point? You would need to do the math but it would come without the cost of the frets
2) what if instead of widening the slots, you taper/round off the nonleading edge? That way you don't have to remove as much material but there would be a stronger tactile indication of where you're at.
3) I think a shim could help with the buzz issue.
Bonus, what if you made the fretboard out of aluminum or just removed the fretboard altogether and cut out blocks of metal and just left the "negative space" where the frets would normally be?
This on a baritone guitar would be bananas. Lacquer the board.
I loved this video. Cheers.
I'm going to try this on my next bass build but I'm going to keep the leading edge of the fret slot and saturate the fretboard with superglue.
Would love to see you try again with the slots cut below the fret slots so the edge of the groove is roughly where the fret was
I was literally just thinking about this a week ago and randomly found this. I made a comment on a different channel wondering what would happen if ....this. I wonder if that's why YT showed me lol the A.I. is powerful here.
It's GENIUS!🔥🔥🔥
Now thats a killer concept! Would make custom builds so much cheaper when there is no fretwork to be done! also, next step: make it scalloped xD
I’ve been thinking about something like this for a guitar designed for playing slide. Hadn’t really thought about leaving the slots unfilled though. That’s a great idea
dude get really wild, have the slots cut out with the true tremperment fret pattern, it would be less work then installing those squiggle frets. you could switch to a stop bar tailpiece, you would have to really shim the neck, but would raise the strings high off the body
This is a fantastic idea, and I think having the perfect intonation as a reference point would open so many compositional possibilities with the fretless aspect.
Fuck yeah
Great idea from the ideas man.
I like the look of the neck..what stain did you use ?
Sure sounds unique.
Very interesting idea!!
Very cool. Been wondering what you've been up to. As mentioned elsewhere, shifting the slots towards the nut would preclude the need to move the nut and saddles. At first I was surprised it rings out clearly, but it's similar to the fingerboard on a Bond Electraglide. As for hitting the pickguard, think of it as your own Floyd Rose speed guide. I put "depth pickguards" on all my experimental builds now. They do take a bit of getting used to until you adjust (IE improve) your picking, but they _will_ make you faster.
My only question is whether or not milling out frets and taking actual wood outta the neck/fingerboard would affect the necks ability to transfer vibration. Might lose some sustain with a mod like this, but other than that, great freakin idea!
This is genius.
bro i love your content, i remember that 9 string... or 10 was outstanding and this? come on man!!!
You must mean the one with the curved frets. Did you see his stone top guitars? Or his laser pickup? Mark does some cool stuff.
Experimenting is great, perhaps test a scalloped neck as it will likely give you more resonance?
If the whole idea is to play where the frets are supposed to be, you're not really fretting and it sounds more like a sitar than a fretted neck. The semi compromised solution for that was created by Vigier: instead of making a wooden fingerboard harder, they have a proprietary metal alloy which replaces the fingerboard. In a sense, it's not really a fretless, but one giant fret. And since the grooves are fixed, you can't move the intonation point like you can do in fretless.
A really groovy idea cat 🐈
Is it worth installing a zero fret? I'm not sure but it might be something you could do.
Groovy.
Such a tease.
Can't wait to see v2.
This might be cool on a 15mm carbon fiber tube neck with Richlite fingerboard. Might be easier than trying to fret Richlite.
How about a saw toothed or stepped pattern to generate relief clearance for the string to be tipping up and away from the fretboard "above" (closer to the bridge) it. You would almost certainly lose the fretless feel though.
ahh, the concave fret guitar, making a home for the finger gunk xD
really cool tho, id probs buy a high-end one that thats polished up with like the intonation and string play dialed in, tougher fretboard and all that, so ye good job.
No more paying for fretwork in the future requires stainless steel...or no frets at all...?
If the big 3 adopt this fretless concept...will they charge more even though less components are used? IE; No fret material and less fretboard material🤣🤣😊
Interesting concept. Thanks for this experiment 😎👍👍
Cool as hell! A little sitarish. 21rst century man are you....
This has been done before, I think the guy patented it too. I think his name is David Beede and he calls it accufretless.
Can someone tell me what type of pedals one could use to get the tone from 5:30
sounds like flange to me, probably with some delay. Maybe Mark will tell us.
Would be interesting to see how an opposite setup would behave. Use a scalloped fretboard with raised “frets”. You still wouldn’t need metal frets and the notes would be easier to fret because you can play it how you’d play a normal guitar. Actually, I might use that myself. Patent pending. Patent pending.
This setup is sometimes done on cellos and contrabasses.
You'd definitely want to epoxy a fingerboard like that, or machine it from aluminum or Richlite or something, otherwise "fret wear" would likely be an issue.
@@normbarrows2 The best option would be Vigier's i-Metal alloy which they use on their Surfretter fretless instruments, however, nobody knows its composition.
@@BrunodeSouzaLino Yeah - no info on their website about "I-metal". From the photos it's probably some steel or aluminum based proprietary alloy, perhaps coated. Whatever it is, it has to be hard to withstand string wear. I've done a few fretless builds, but I don't like the tonal difference you get on fretlesses between fretted and open string notes, so I prefer fretted for both playing and building.
Interesting experiment. I've seen videos where giant frets, about 4 or 5 mm wide were used, and even Glass frets. I'd be scared to play that one.
I had glass frets made and put them on a one piece Bubinga neck. Too much of a good thing. That sweet glass slide sound, but w crappy bass and treble and a weak sound stage.
@@terryenglish7132 Thanks for sharing your results. 👍
The problem with glass frets is installing them. You need an arbor press and even then you run the risk of breaking them.
@@BrunodeSouzaLino I used the smallest glass rod that was at my local glass shop . I had them round the frets ends like the new ball end frets. I laid out the fret positions w lines using a pen. A little super glue on the line, then place the fret. The fret acts like a lens and turns blue like the ink line when in place. I had to sand the rods flat after they were in place. The glass sawed the string in half after a few bends since it met the string at a single point !
Patent it! 😯
…well you can’t just move all the intonation points 2 millimeters towards the bridge
Now do scalloped fretless lol
...eat the rich...give me a break...
Found the rich guy! Get 'em, boys!
*butters some bread*
This is something truly original, great work. Keep going. Maybe try cutting the wider slot going BACK from the original fret position and then the bridge wouldn't need to move (nor the nut).
'interesting' ...i always thought that the purpose of the frets are define the perfect pitch of the sound no matter how far or close of the fret you're pressing. However, while you're playing fretless i was under the impression that the should press right on the spot where the fret used to be....i see your fingers are pressing in between removed frets....strange...
Nah
💥👏👍🤘💥
FFS dude, why didn't you play with a clean signal? Are you trying to showcase the fretboard project or your freaking pedal board? You can barely hear the difference between this and a regular fretted neck...
No precision of frets with no sound of fretless. IMO a simple lined fretless board is still best
You get both depending on fretting effort and location. solid fretting behind the intonation points gets you fretted behavior and tone. Fretless style fretting between the slots gives you fretless behavior and tone - and microtones between the standard fretted notes.
you shouldve created something to fill the slots sothe guitar could be intonated .instead you created a mess
You never mentioned the Marco Basses patent (recently expired or not) at any point in this video. You presented this as a new idea/proof of your own concept experiment which it isn't. It is disrespectful for you to say you just knocked off a little trial of this idea to see if it would even work when another person invented/patented/produced and sold several variations of this exact idea for years. If the patent has expired that means you would be able to produce and sell necks with this adaptation or to innovate with this as a starting point. What you did was to make a video claiming this to be your new idea which is "patently" not true
Never knew there was a patent. Never intended to sell necks. I definitely tried very hard to google the concept which is virtually impossible. Trying to search for "slots", "grooves" or "fretless" pulls up the same old stuff.
Y'all are ppl that do too much extra, for no good reason.
while i admit this man is creative and very detailed orientated, I must say im hardly surprised that this same guy has a leftist eat the rich guitar and then as he does on every single video play electronic music completely devoid of any and all guitar !! Bro figure your shit out are ypu a guitar builder or are you a engineer who is piggy backing on guitar niche. great work but your kinda saying quite part out loud here