Violin Forum/Message Board

[Heft]

Hey,
I haven't played the violin in about 30 years, but I a pretty good guitarist. I'm thinking of getting a fretless guitar and would like to hear what your thoughts are on fingerboards vs fretboards.
Thanks
Heft.

[DonLeister]

Since you asked, and this is my opinion, frets are great on guitars and fingerboards are great on violins (and fiddles).
I am not a violinist but play fiddle a lot and some guitar. As a fiddler I need the guitar to provide rhythm and solid chords, no sliding notes or tempo anomalies, the fiddle does that.

I repair and make violins and I don't know anybody that even works on fretted violin fingerboards and I'm not a decent guitar player so I can't speak to the idea of a fretless guitar.

What style playing do you enjoy?

[Heft]

I mostly play alot of blues and rock. I really appreciate you feedback, I'll stay with frets!

[DonLeister]

Still it might be fun to experiment and try fretless guitars when you can!

I have not heard fretless guitars but have played with old time players of fretless open back banjos. Open backs are warm to begin with and the lack of frets makes them a little more so.

I have seen some with ebony boards and then brass overlaying most of the way up the board.

[Kifok]

I have a fretboard in my flat in Greece here and I play it almost every weekend. I really enjoy the sound of it. I haven't been playing violin for years too and I am trying to remember how to do it, I am watching a lot of youtube videos.

[John Cadd]

I began playing violin at 10 years old. I began making at 16 (self taught ) and later ,in between various jobs . Lately (when I passed 60 ) I began learning to play guitar . Always the fine tuning of guitars frustrated me . More so than piano tuning . I retuned some guitars to see what Historical tunings sounded like. I was gluing bronze wire on the fretboard with Evostik . These were Wiggly Frets . They worked well . I used an Orchestral tuner .
When I renovated an old Valencia guitar that was falling to bits , I decided to tune it accurately to Equal temperament .The result looked very like the other retuned guitars Wiggly Frets . The straight fret system imposes out of tune notes on guitarists and numerous fudgy excuses have been worn thin for many years .
The accurate Equal Temperament tuning was very pleasant. Not perfect for me as I had ingrained violin tuning in my brain by that time .It was not a problem with chords but with separate note relationships . From a violinist point of view that is much more specific than hearing how a chord sounds .
Moving on from that I devised a way to disguise the appearance of wiggly frets , which seems to be hated by the majority of players .
I fitted 5mm wide straight strips of bone frets . All these were 2mm thick and by carving grooves the tuning of the notes was achieved . The other reason for bone frets was to see if it sounded better . My logic was Bone Nuts sounded better than Metal Nuts. Please excuse the capitals .
So far the sound ,to me , is better with bone and wide ,straight bone frets look very presentable . The grooves give it a Mother of Pearl effect .So no harm in that . Altogether a good experiment that worked well .
Later on I will divide the straight frets in two pieces in case the metal wound strings are too abrasive for the bone . The nylon strings will not wear out the frets . Removing a bone fret is easy to do with a thin spatula warmed up with a soldering iron. Evostik is very resiliant in use and is very obliging when warmed up for removal . I think the method is sufficiently future proofed .
Foe fretless guitar playing the full size guitar may be a struggle. A smaller guitar (3/4 size) for a viola player with big hands could be a workable solution. Start with a possible solution and work outwards from there .
For full size guitar and small hands you may need to stick to cello music for a while .
Records show the shortest Strad viola scale length is 14 1/4 inches. ( I should have given you a maximum figure for a viola here to compare with a guitar scale length ) My 3/4 size guitar scale is 21 inches . Now see how you can close the gap with your fingers and a guitar to avoid everything being out of tune.
With a guitar it is difficult to keep all fingers exactly in place on the frets unless you are lucky to have long fingers . So just a practical look at the idea of fretless guitars . Good luck with that .It may not work with your current guitar but I have worked out ways to avoid obstacles . I`ve done me best for you . Full size Viola scale 15 3/8ths inches . Or try a Capo .

[Mike Shuman]