Re: was now tele fretless OT

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

> Per Boysen wrote:
> Tellies are no good for fretless, since it is hard to plane the
>>
>> fingerboard well due to its curved character.

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 9:55 AM, andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> Find a good large mirror.
> Stick sandpaper to it with double sided tape.
> Remove nut from neck (and neck from body).
>
> Now it's not too hard to sand it flat and keep
> the curve.


There must be many carpenter specific methods to plane a curved neck
well. In my case I'm too lazy to do all that. So I prefer to look at
material that already lends itself well for fretless guitar, rather
than costumizing another Telecaster. An important factor is that the
neck, or specifically the finger board, has to be as hard as possible.
A very hard wood pane or even metal cover works excellent. And a
bolt-on neck is less favorable then one that is built together with
the body. The action for a fretless guitar has to be set extremely
low, that is why planing the board is essential. Compared to a bass
guitar strings don't have that much mass and this is why baritone neck
are popular for fretless guitars. And also the use of thicker strings,
but then you might need to adjust intonation by moving the bridge a
bit further down, or fret markers on the neck will indicate falsely.
You see, there's a lot of stuff to keep in mind and that's why I'm
finding those expertize built Vigier fretless guitars so tempting.

Per
(rather making music than messing around planing boards or whatever)