Fretless fingerboard coating?

[gdgross]

I've got a fretless maple/rosewood guitar neck coming this week (warmoth) and a body waiting for it at home. Have been doing a bit of reading on the web about epoxy coating of fretless necks. Mostly of course on the bass discussion forums. Seems like many bass players, especially those who put round wounds on their fretless basses, seem to prefer the epoxy coating. But maybe that's just because Jaco did it...

Curious if anyone on here has an opinion one way or the other?  My instinct tells me that even round wound guitar strings would chew up a fingerboard more slowly than round wound bass strings... I'm a little inclined to leave the fingerboard unfinished and see how I like it first. 

I do like the thought of an epoxy coating increasing the sustain of a fretless guitar. I suppose string instruments don't have this problem since the string is constantly excited with the bow, and playing pizz is supposed to sound kind of plunky.

Anyway, anyone have experience or opinions about this?

 

[gdgross]

FYI I ended up abandoning the idea of shaping my own neck and cutting the nut slot myself, if anyone remembered the last few posts about this. Too much wiggle room and room for errors.

I'll probably try to get that neck up to speed at some point, but I decided to start somewhere solid first.

 

[Cagey]

I don't play a fretless, but regardless of wear I suspect that with something like Rosewood you'd want a hard filler like Epoxy sanded smooth just to get rid of the noise the open grain would create. With something like Ebony you wouldn't have that, as the grain is already very tight.

 

[Day-mun]

I play fretless basses only with flat-wound strings; the idea of round-wounds on a fretless fingerboard just seems like cruel self-hatred! -Why would anyone punish themselves and their instrument so?!  :sad1:

Joking aside, I do not use any sort of filler or coating on my fingerboards (again, that is with flat-wounds), and both the rosewood and the ebony show little to no wear. If you can remember that you're playing a fretless instrument when going for vibrato (slide your finger slightly back-n-forth inline with the string, avoiding bending strings across the grain of the 'board), then your ax should stay in pretty good shape.

I haven't much experience with fretless guitars, but I saw a guy (I'll be damned if I can't remember his name... something Kelly) that works at Elderly Instruments (Lansing MI). He plays on occasion with bands that do traditional Eastern Indian music (Sumkali from Ann Arbor MI, for example). Anyway, He had a fretless 12-string with 11 flat-wounds on it. -"Fretted" it with the back of his fingernails and it sounded super-cool. I think I remember him saying one could use thimbles as well; a guitar string's voice just dies away much quicker than the bass' heavier strings, so something harder than a fingertip was needed to get something like sustain.

-Dunno that he sealed or coated his neck with anything, -sure didn't look like it, and I didn't ask him.

 

[stubhead]

Jaco Pastorius coated his fingerboard with marine epoxy, which is really weird. Epoxy is pretty soft to begin with, and marine epoxy is especially soft - it's designed to put a slightly flexible, plastic-like coating over boats to resist salt water. If you've ever used epoxy for drop-filling dings instead of superglue, you know it sands away easier than most hardwoods. The only reason to do that on a neck is if you were really, really sweaty, you might get a margin of protection. Super glue is soft too - if you want protection against wear, you need something harder than ebony, right? :icon_scratch:

I have two fretless basses, one pau ferro board and another ebony, but like the man says, flatwounds all the way. I also have a fretless guitar with an ebony over bloodwood neck. I have been using it so much for slide I haven't really engaged in something that would wear on the fingerboard, I'll probably fiddle with it soon. I made a high nut for slide and a low nut for fingering - and I already figured out that it's easier to leave the high nut on all the time and use a capo to lower it for finger playing, than it is to use a low nut, and a capo with a little riser underneath for slide. I'm not worried about the strings wearing on the board, if I do see some problem I'll switch over to the GHS "rollerwound" or "burnished" strings, they're made as roundwounds but then squashed a bit smoother. But I'm completely capable of re-surfacing my own fingerboards, if I wasn't roundwounds might be a bit more intimidating.

Ebony board with maple fretlines:


Fretless guitar is definitely a rising force:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fretless_guitar

unfretted.com is something of a clearinghouse - http://www.unfretted.com/loader.php
If you poke around the unfretted site, you'll eventually run into a "free book" written by Tim Donahue. It reads like he was writing it as he tried to figure it out, not AFTER he figured it out. :icon_scratch: One thing he recommends is planing the fingerboard every time he changes strings - which is dim-witted. He also mentions that there have been times he had a kinked string, which caused him to re-plane the fingerboard repeatedly, until he figured out he had a bad string? ??? :icon_scratch:  ???  DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON - AVOID WARNING...

There's a lot to listen to, Adrian Belew, Ned Evett, and especially this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Fiuczynski
This is new, and looks serious:
http://fretlessguitarlessons.com/en/

I've been playing slide & steel guitar for so long now that I know what to practice to attack my own weak points though. I'm not sure there's any instruction that won't be REAL idiosyncratic, because it's such a new field.

Guthrie Govan, the Evett fellow, and Bumblefoot all seem to be trying to make it sound as much like a fretted guitar as possible, which I don't get.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2P3lXUofOs

 

[line6man]

Jaco Pastorius coated his fingerboard with marine epoxy, which is really weird. Epoxy is pretty soft to begin with, and marine epoxy is especially soft - it's designed to put a slightly flexible, plastic-like coating over boats to resist salt water. If you've ever used epoxy for drop-filling dings instead of superglue, you know it sands away easier than most hardwoods. The only reason to do that on a neck is if you were really, really sweaty, you might get a margin of protection. Super glue is soft too - if you want protection against wear, you need something harder than ebony, right? :icon_scratch:

The marine epoxy that Jaco used (Petit's Polypoxy) was not a very good one. He refinished his fingerboard every few years when it wore out.

Note that contrary to what some people are lead to think, when epoxy coatings are used to protect fingerboards from string wear, they are NOT meant to be hard coatings. Rather, they are meant to be durable. Think about car tires, for example. They definitely are not hard, as you can deform the rubber with finger strength, but they are very durable. In a similar vein, epoxy coating can sort of spring back to its original shape when you deform it with string wear.

I have two fretless Warmoth necks. One has bare wood, and the other has an epoxy coating. Both have held up well to roundwound string wear, but they have very different tonalities. The epoxy is noticeably brighter, without the warmth and woodiness of the uncoated board. The difference is so extreme that you need to be sure that an epoxied fingerboard is what you want. You have not stated your tonal preferences, and they are very important here.

 

[gdgross]

Thanks for the replies guys, you've given me some good food for thought.

As far as the guitar/tone goes, it'll be going into a mahogany t-style body with 2 humbuckers.  Although, as I do with almost every humbucker I install, I'll add a series/parallel switch to each one; I find the parallel wiring to be quite useful when I want a brighter tone out of an HB.

All that being said, I don't know how the guitar will sound, I've never built something like this before. Originally I was a bit concerned that there would be a lack of sustain, so that for me thinking about fingerboard epoxy coatings.  I suppose the only way to know is to build the guitar and see how I like it, then coat if I feel I'd like something brighter/more sustain-y.

I've never played a fretless guitar, (although I've played plenty of fretless basses) so I'm honestly not sure exactly what tone I'm going for yet.  I'll report back for sure though.

 

[Cagey]

I've never played a fretless guitar...

Neither have I. Even after 45 years of plinking around I can't imagine going without the training wheels  :laughing7:

 

[paulkevinanderson]

I have pried the frets from a brand new. Vangoa 12 string, and filled the grooves with shellac purchased on line. Results are uneven-- the shellac didn' t magically level the fingerboard when it dried, and now the board that was rough is now rough and gummy--but I would definitely do it again. In fact, if you want to switch from musician to luthier, you could make a career removing frets and resurfacing fingerboards, and you might become infamous then famous, then posthumous. It' s very much fun. The *casters that were overproduced can only be saved through drastic fret removal surgery, IMHO. And the cheap acoustics, do them as well.

 

[paulkevinanderson]

I have pried the frets from a brand new. Vangoa 12 string, and filled the grooves with shellac purchased on line. Results are uneven-- the shellac didn' t magically level the fingerboard when it dried, and now the board that was rough is now rough and gummy--but I would definitely do it again. In fact, if you want to switch from musician to luthier, you could make a career removing frets and resurfacing fingerboards, and you might become infamous then famous, then posthumous. It' s very much fun. The *casters that were overproduced can only be saved through drastic fret removal surgery, IMHO. And the cheap acoustics, do them as well.

Musically, the advantage of fretless is independent fretting of strings, unlike a slide guitar which is linear ( because a slide is fixed in one straight position.) You can change fretting finger distances while you play, slide one finger a tone, and the other a half tone. Fretless players who don' t take advantage of this, well, they must have different motives, not necessarily bad ones. Using thimbles instead of using a fingerboard at all is a possibility. (A harp with thimbles.). But I don' t like wearing a watch much less thimbles.

 

[paulkevinanderson]

Musically, the advantage of fretless is independent fretting of strings, unlike a slide guitar which is linear ( because a slide is fixed in one straight position.) You can change fretting finger distances while you play, slide one finger a tone, and the other a half tone. Fretless players who don' t take advantage of this, well, they must have different motives, not necessarily bad ones. Using thimbles instead of using a fingerboard at all is a possibility. (A harp with thimbles.). But I don' t like wearing a watch much less thimbles.

The reasoning behind a fretless guitar is that its a guitar, not a silent bass, not a screeching virtuoso melody violin, not a whiny, tinny lap steel. It "handles" like a guitar, and sounds like a guitar.

 

[paulkevinanderson]

If there were one thing that could "save" music from the pitfalls of digitalization, it would be fretless guitar. Digitalization began with the piano, and moved onto the guitar, and now it's computerized, reductive, and new musicians have no idea what they are missing, because they think digitalization (frets) is some important nonsense.

 

[stratamania]

@paulkevinanderson welcome to the forum.

Perhaps try to participate in current threads rather than posting your first four posts in a thread that has been dormant for almost ten years.

 

[aarontunes]

@paulkevinanderson welcome to the forum.

Perhaps try to participate in current threads rather than posting your first four posts in a thread that has been dormant for almost ten years.

Yes, welcome. @stratamania gives good advice. You'll get more traction on your posts by contributing to current topics.

Also, as a note to anyone who may read this, I believe Paul posted repeatedly because his posts weren't showing up as he expected them to. This is because he is still a "Newbie" user, and his first post contained a forbidden word: "gummy".

 

[NedRyerson]

Yes, welcome. @stratamania gives good advice. You'll get more traction on your posts by contributing to current topics.

Also, as a note to anyone who may read this, I believe Paul posted repeatedly because his posts weren't showing up as he expected them to. This is because he is still a "Newbie" user, and his first post contained a forbidden word: "gummy".

I can't imagine why that would be forbidden......

 

[Rick]

I think he meant crumby, grumpy or maybe gumby? Because if it's dried why would it be ... you know ... that word that begins with a G?