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Okay so I saw my friend playing the violin the other day and was amazed to know it doesn't have frets, and my friend could still play a specific note. So sitting here I thought of it and looked up fret less guitars, does anyone have any experience with one of these?
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No experience. Never seen one. But I like your user name. :p
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Well my mom is "mekidsmom"
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Memomskid would have been cool too.
I have a fretless electric bass. I have not heard of a fretless guitar. It's all muscle memory and very, very carefully listening to yourself play. The nice thing about it is that if your string goes out of tune while you're playing, all you have to do to correct it is to adjust where your finger is a slight bit. That's one of the reasons I rarely ever play open notes on the bass. The other reason is that it made transposing a whole lot simpler. The not nice thing is that it requires precision of where you put your finger down. You can not put it down anywhere kind of close to the fret and get the right note. However, because no one is that tremendously precise, fretless basses have a distinctive groovy sound when played at or above the seventh fret. The further up the neck, the groovier it is because the little bit less precise the tone is (because there's smaller spaces between notes - any deviation has a larger effect). To enhance the 'fretless sound', I put flatwound strings on mine. Sooooo smooooooth. It's like playing strings made out of butter.
All electric basses used to be fretless just like double basses used in orchestras. It was Fender that first put frets on an electric bass to add precision to the tone that was played. Thus the name "Fender Precision Bass."
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Fender was the first to Mass produce it but Audiovox offered a 4 string fretted "Guitar shaped" bass in their 1935 catalog (invented by Paul Tutmarc) that I believe was the first... And then in '47 there was the "Serenade" brand made by Tutmarcs son. Neither gained much popularity though... Fender carried the idea to mass production in the 50's with the Precision bass.
Reading your post got me interested and i started doing a little researching 
Last edited by Guitarpix (2012-03-22 02:20:23)
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There is actually a web site for them called unfretted.com.
Looks interesting.
Here is a link to a cool sound clipfromf an unfretted guitar. It's got an interesting sound.
http://www.unfretted.com/mp3s/tellef/th … _thing.mp3
Last edited by jets60 (2012-03-22 03:03:39)
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mekidsmom_son wrote:
Well my mom is "mekidsmom"
LOL, I know!
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When I was unsuccessfully trying to learn the cello, which is of course, fretless, my teacher put masking tape at the point where the frets would be. Over time, muscle memory led me to put my fingers, more or less, at the right point. Listening helped make adjustments in pitch. I've thought about what it would be like to play a fretless guitar--I'd kinda like to see how it would be to play one.
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More stringed instruments than not are fretless. Guitars are the weird ones. Frankly, the thought of it scares me.
The best fretless guitar guy on the planet, IMO, is a dude named Ed DeGenero. He used to be local up here, but now resides in Malibu. On the internet, he hangs out a bit at unfretted.com, too.
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Never heard of a fretless guitar, but I've seen lots of fretless basses.
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