Fretless guitar

[10maxpower01]

I have a fretless bass and was just curious if anyone here has one or has played one. Reason I ask is I have this Squire I never play and was thinking of replacing the hardware, then I had some crazytrain of thought and decided on defretting it.

Thoughts / opinions?

Cagey, I'm looking forward to your post.  :redflag: <== ( I don't know how to make that flag white )

 

[greenmean]

Why not? 
This guy plays one. He is pretty famous here in Europe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63GD-OPknbc&feature=related

 

[Cagey]

I have enough trouble with fretted instruments; I can't imagine not even having that much help to find a note <grin>

 

[stubhead]

I've "made" a couple the conventional way, i.e. "I hate you beater-guitar, and I'm going to TEAR YOU UP...." The unwound strings lose a lot somehow - 
:hello2: "I've just invented an out-of-tune electric banjo!" :hello2:

I think oud and sarod players and the serious fretless guitarists play with their fingernails, tilted up on their left hand. Ouch. I still have an old ten-ton maple-bodied Aria Pro II that's maybe got some potential, but I'd like to figure out a five-string bridge for two reasons. One, you could use all wound strings, 20-32-42-52-66 or thereabouts? Also, I've been playing fretless bass for a long time, and having enough string spacing to get two fingertips side-by-side is a great help. There's actually whole societies and cults of these people out there, headquartered at unfretted.com. But I won't post clips, because it mostly sounds kinda awful. Go on, you listen to it and let us know:
http://www.unfretted.com/loader.php?LINK=main

 

[10maxpower01]

Go on, you listen to it and let us know

Hm. I kinda dig it.  :icon_smile: You could definitely get some cool middle eastern sounds pretty easy using their exotic scales and such.

 

[Doughboy]

I have a fretless bass and was just curious if anyone here has one or has played one. Reason I ask is I have this Squire I never play and was thinking of replacing the hardware, then I had some crazytrain of thought and decided on defretting it.

Thoughts / opinions?

Cagey, I'm looking forward to your post.  :redflag: <== ( I don't know how to make that flag white )

You mean a fretless neck-thru body guitar like the one I had made for me in this pic?  :toothy12:

 

[10maxpower01]

<drools> Mmm that's a very tasty lookin' guitar you have there. Specs please?  :blob7:

What kind of music do you play with it? After looking at unfretted it seems like you could play anything from Nile  :headbang1: to recreating whale sounds.

 

[swarfrat]

Why put a whammy on a fretless guitar?  Other than that, pretty slick. If I ever get down the pile of project ideas I have far enough to get around to a fretless guitar, I'll probably pull a couple ideas I've seen here lately together and make it a slide only guitar with high action, and do a fretline that blends in like black on black.

 

[Kei]

i wanted to make one too, and i always wanted a vigier surfretter for ages

 

[djf67]

Guthrie Govan makes it sound worth doing...

[youtube=425,350]1PyOZhgQnvU[/youtube]

 

[lafromla1]

Seems like its a continuous slide without needing the additional hardware.  Wonder how it would work with some Allman Brother's tunes.

 

[stubhead]

If you poke through the fretless site, one thing that comes up is that pretty much any auto glass shop has the capacity to cut, bend and polish weirdly-curved pieces of glass - so you don't have to throw 2300 - 2700 Euros for a Vigier, you can just take a thin neck you wouldn't mind being a quarter-inch thicker (remember -NO frets) to a glass shop.

It's an instrument that really cries out for some little kid to get a hold of it at the age of 7 or 8 and then munch the world.... most guitarists who want to make money playing music resort to frets, and the fretless stays at home. The hangover conservatism of the radio & big labels towards more more more "classic" rock comes in, but dinosaurs do go extinct. If you think of Bumblefoot & Guthrie & Vai, it's still gimmicky, but that's just structural - I would happily buy an album of great music played on a fretless. Umm, OK, where?  :icon_scratch: Hmmm.

A while back, I had saved up some dough for a Warr or Chapman Stick, and I was tapping my little brains out on a seven-string. Then I bought a pile of CD's by the "touch guitar" guys - and there's something about the people who "compose" on that instrument, they all sound alike. It seems pathologically impossible to avoid an alternating tippy-tappy rhythmic structure, it was just not very good music. Sixers Stanley Jordan & this guy are still my fave tappers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X833J0MLXgU

Point being, when some is brimming over with great compositions that require him to obsessively master a fretless guitar to play them correctly, we'll hear about it. Hasn't happened yet. And, it ain't me, babe.

Whoa... hey....

 

[Doughboy]

Why put a whammy on a fretless guitar?  Other than that, pretty slick. If I ever get down the pile of project ideas I have far enough to get around to a fretless guitar, I'll probably pull a couple ideas I've seen here lately together and make it a slide only guitar with high action, and do a fretline that blends in like black on black.

This was originally a regular guitar which I had defreted, changed the fingerboard & changed to a fretless, hence the floyd. Having said that, a tremolo on a fretless gives you waaaaay cooler sounds & phrasing.

 

[Doughboy]

<drools> Mmm that's a very tasty lookin' guitar you have there. Specs please?  :blob7:

What kind of music do you play with it? After looking at unfretted it seems like you could play anything from Nile  :headbang1: to recreating whale sounds.

Gibson scale neck
Basswood body
Maple neck / ebony fingerboard 16" radius
Floyd & EMG PUs

I use flatwound 13s tuned down 1/2 a step. I find this sounds better for fretless.

I play lots of different styles, but the cool thing about fretless is that it turns that style into something new. For example, Playing blues on a fretless sounds like a slide. It's really wierd when you just get one, but it gets easier as time goes by.

 

[Gabe]

i don't get why some of these guys don't just learn piano if they like using 2 hands to tap stuff. It would be easier and probably give you more options and a wider audience. If you think of Van Halen, the reason he started tapping was to make it sound like arpeggios on a keyboard. At least you can use it as a good "dick measure" trick when playing with guitarists who sound better but can't do all the technical stuff.

 

[Doughboy]

i don't get why some of these guys don't just learn piano if they like using 2 hands to tap stuff. It would be easier and probably give you more options and a wider audience. If you think of Van Halen, the reason he started tapping was to make it sound like arpeggios on a keyboard. At least you can use it as a good "dick measure" trick when playing with guitarists who sound better but can't do all the technical stuff.

You can't compare guitar to piano. Totally different timbres & what if you're a guitar player who wants to play counterpoint with 2 hands on your chosen instruments. Just like with anything else, most people doing it will be medicore at best, but there will be a few who rise to the top ala TJ Helmrich & Carlos Vamos. Take a look at Carlos doing his 2 handed version of Little Wing & tell me it doesn't put a HUGE smile on your face.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwm-vxGgFf4[/youtube]