Accurately Cutting a Fret-Board?

[JamesH]

I hate to start a new thread here but...

Ok, Getting the fretboard cutting farmed out is tough and expensive unless it is just the 'fretboard' not the whole instument body like a Stick.

Can someone out there cut the frets in the wood of the instrument body for me...

Ok, I may have to do this myself... Does anyone have advice on setting up tools / jigs to generate very high-accuracy cuts? Tips Tricks?

Thanks All!

[GaryOpenhill]

Originally posted by JamesH
I hate to start a new thread here but...

Ok, Getting the fretboard cutting farmed out is tough and expensive unless it is just the 'fretboard' not the whole instument body like a Stick.

Can someone out there cut the frets in the wood of the instrument body for me...

Ok, I may have to do this myself... Does anyone have advice on setting up tools / jigs to generate very high-accuracy cuts? Tips Tricks?

Thanks All!

Do not FRET, friend! (get the witty pun?)

I don't think getting it right to the 1000th of an inch helps! Too many other factors when it comes to intonation.

Here another witty pun:

"I'll be BACH"

hahaaaaaaa...eh...ehem...

ANd since im on a humorous roll, here a very funny joke:

"Give a man a match, and he'll be warm for a minute, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

[JamesH]

That was hillarious! I needed a good joke!

Well, you know what happens when you drop a piano down a mine shaft?

You get A-Flat miner. Groan...

Maybe I AM sweating this too much. I am now laying out the design in CAD. I noticed when looking at the Chapman stick that on thier newer instruments they have this adjustable nut affair, some dampening material and then the first (?) fret.

I understand that there is a 'zeroth' fret on some instruments like this? DO the strings actually rest on this 'zeroth fret' before the actual traditional first fret as measured from the nut?

[rjgoos]

>I understand that there is a 'zeroth' fret on some instruments like this? DO the strings actually rest on this 'zeroth fret' before the actual traditional first fret as measured from the nut?<

Guitars have traditionally either had a "zero fret" and a slotted string guide, or a "nut" which serves as both.

The early Stick models had a zero fret and string guide:

http://tinyurl.com/e7ke9

In this picture, you can see the shiny zero fret, and just above it, a dark brown string guide.

I would say that the advantage of doing it this way, is simplicity of construction, and maybe a bit better intonation on the first few frets.

I would say that the disadvantage of a zero fret, is that all of the "lift" comes from the bridge, meaning that the height of the action is not the same across the entire fretboard. This can lead to some buzzing between the finger and the zero fret (which the musician, but not the audience can hear).

With a nut, theoretically, the lift of the strings off of the frets can be identical across the entire fretboard.

Question for Traktor and others....did anyone ever make an instrument with a zero fret that is a bit higher than the other frets? Perhaps one could experiment by placing some layers of aluminum foil over a zero fret (ugly, but again, for experimentation).


Jay

[traktor]

Originally posted by rjgoos
>Question for Traktor and others....did anyone ever make an instrument with a zero fret that is a bit higher than the other frets? Zero-Fret design makes higher demands on getting your fretboard, and your fret-tops, very very flat so they form as close to a perfect plane as possible.

Although wood has wonderful sound, and feel, and workability, and lightness, and resistance to temperature change, it is in fact a non-uniform organic material. You seal it as best you can with a finish to slow/prevent water-vapor exchange, but even then wood moves some with adequate changes of temperature or humidity. And being non-uniform, the movement may not be uniform. We offset this by laminating the wood parts, so the tendency of one laminate to move south is offset by the tendency of its neighbor laminate to move north.

In practice, with work, one can get a fairly flat and fairly stable playing plane. The zero fret design takes the string at fret one very very close to fret one, so stability of wood, good truss design, and very flat frets are needful.

A nut raises strings higher. This gives more leeway on the action but increases the out-of-tune sharpness that occurs on all normal guitars at frets 1-3. Feiten offset of the nut helps, as would filing nut down to lower strings as best you can. Filing nut well requires skill at getting each string's 'pivot' point to the correct location, but for our tapping instruments where open strings are rarely played perhaps this is less important for us than on a Les Paul. The last hassle with a nut is that it's filing is specific to a particular string arrangement (crossed/uncrossed), and to a tuning (inverted/normal 5ths), and to a set of string gauges. Once set up, there's no changing nothing unless you want to re-do the nut. That is, if you wish to play in tune, and with good action.

Early Stick design was zero-fret, but afterward, presumably to get better action and less buzzing or less critical fret-work, Chapman used small threaded bolts for each string, so each string could be raised or lowered, like string-saddles do. This works very nicely for action. However, using a filed 'v-slot' atop a bolt upon which the string rides, I see no way to precisely control each string's 'pivot point' and so I think this design contributes to considerably more out-of-tune sound more than would a filed nut. Without some compensation (a la Feiten), you'd still have several frets playing out of tune as on any normal guitar, and perhaps more due to the imprecision of the pivot-point of each string.

For Megatar instruments, we returned in several design points to traditional lutherie, as lessons learned over hundreds of years often remain very workable. In this case we returned to a zero fret, though it makes greater demands on fretwork, because (a) it produces very low string action, (b) you can string it with any strings in any direction or arrangement and the bottoms of the strings are still at the correct height above fret-tops, and (c) you can precisely install it with a Feiten compensation to provide 'in tune' playing in the first few frets as normal guitars cannot do.

This 'modular' method of using zero-fret design also permits us to build either traditional parallel-fret instruments, or the Novak 'fanned-fret' instruments. Here is a photo showing the 'string-guide' nut, with a fanned zero-fret on our ToneWeaver instrument --

http://megatar.com/english/Accessories/Parts___Mods/TWNut-SMALL.JPG

Now, finally to respond to Jay's question -- Yes, I've experimented with using a (very slightly) larger zero fret, and it does make the action slightly better, without much other damage. However, the trick is -- how do you level *all* the other frets into a perfect plane, without taking this zero fret down with them? Do you install it *after* doing all the other fretwork? Do you use a levelling technique which somehow spares this single fret? Those are the questions to be solved if you attempt this approach.

[BrendaEM]

I had a fretboard radiused and fretted at:
http://www.allenguitar.com/fret_slo.htm

The did a great job.

There are online freboard calculators, some even compensate for string stretch.

Stewmac.com, amongst other luthier supply places, sells a fretting saw with an adjustable stop. The problem is their mitrebox seems too narrow for anything over six strings. They also sell fretboard rulers and notched templates for circular saws, as well as a circular saw blade ground for fretslots.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Fretting_supplies/Saws_and_slots.html

The challenge is measuring accuratly, and cutting on that line. I have seen pictures of a project that someone used an x-acto knife to mark the lines and then used chalk to highlight them.

Becasue of an oversight, I had to cut a few slots in a pre-prepared fretboard. I found a Dremel's saw too thin, and fine.

[The hot setup would be: a sliding-type radial arm saw with a sliding table, a find plade, and a digital readout (DRO.)]

[JamesH]

Thanks everyone for the input. You are all really helping me to understand this and clarify my project better!

Brenda mentioned having a radiused fretboard. Does the Chapman Stick have a radiused fretboard and if so how much radius? Is a radius necessary for this instrument?

Traktor was helping me with the zero fret concept as well.

I attached a pic off chapmans site of his "nut flaps" the first fret appears to be the firs fret in this case?

I can easily machine something like this. It seems that for my first instrument this would be a good Idea as it would give me more flexibility especially with a fully adjustable bridge which I will also machine.

Thoughts anyone? Anyone? Anyone?

Oh, Oh Oh! Does anyone know these two things:

1. Is the pegboard head parallel to the fingerboard or tipped back on some angle. (It looks parallel to me)

2. Any thoughts about the large "pyaramid frets" on Stew Macdonalds site? These seem closer to the rails although I still have concern over the rapididity of nickle silver wear v.s. stainless.

[rjgoos]

JamesH wrote:

>It seems that for my first instrument....<


I like the word "first", James. For me, it has taken more than one instrument to get my designs and shop skills up to where they should be.

I'd encourage you to respect other people's patents, though. A home builder, building one instrument, is as subject to patent laws as a company that makes hundreds of instruments.


Jay

[JamesH]

Hi Jay,

Re patent laws. I appreciate the advice.

I will probably use a variation of Chapmans Ideas. There are already MANY similarities to what he is doing and what I used to do in Laser and Optical engineering regarding sliding fixtures, gimbal assemblies etc.

I have no intention of going into the "Tap instrument building business".

His and other persons patents serve to protect him from being commercially exploited. I have no intentions of bringing my instrument/ instruments into the market place for profits or charity.

I respect greatly the work he and others have done and have no intention of applying any ideas for other than subjective eductional gain, and artistic satisfaction.

The patent office's basic disposition is: To objectively catalogue and protect an individual's idea from being itellectually exploited for profits (an objective value) while providing a basis for others to improve upon their work and seek profits. They must seek permission from the patent holder to improve on the idea if they wish to bring it to market.

For instance, the person that put the back on the chair had to get permission from the guy that built the stool before he could sell it. But is was not illegal for him to put a back on a stool for his own use.

All engineering of any sort since the invention of the wheel
depends upon the work of the individual before them and should be respected. I respect his work.

I do not expect to improve upon it as lutherie <sp?> is a brand new area of interest for me and WILL NOT be a money-making enterprise.

Eventually I may buy one of Emmet Chapman's instruments, a Megatar or Warr Guitar...If I take to this playing style.

So by his and others publicly available ideas we all learn, prosper and thus drive our economy.

If anyone is offended, even from a purely emotional basis, that I am incorporating an idea or similar idea I will gladly seek a different alternative. There is more than one way to skin a cat as they say...

[BigDaddyPoo]

Originally posted by JamesH
Does the Chapman Stick have a radiused fretboard and if so how much radius? Is a radius necessary for this instrument?

The stick and Warr Guitars have flat fretboards, as I think Megatars do. Some people like BredaEM who have been tapping on guitars for some time like the feel of radiused fingerboards though.

Originally posted by JamesH
1. Is the pegboard head parallel to the fingerboard or tipped back on some angle. (It looks parallel to me)

The stick and warr have a flat peg head. The angled peghead found on most guitars is to increase tension across the nut so open strings will sustain longer and be less likely to buzz. Since most tappers don't play open notes and most instruments have dampening material, it is just extra work to make an angled head stock.

Do you own machining equipment? I think I am going to build a bridge or have a bridge built for my project, so I may need some parts made for me.

[traktor]

Originally posted by BigDaddyPoo
The angled peghead found on most guitars is to increase tension across the nut so open strings will sustain longer and be less likely to buzz. Since most tappers don't play open notes and most instruments have dampening material, it is just extra work to make an angled head stock. A flat-head such as Leo Fender originally designed on the strat and tele, provided him with a cheaper manufacturing method, and you can use a thinner (ie: cheaper) piece of wood. But he then had to add a couple of gadgets to hold the strings down, or risk their failing to firmly sit upon the nut. The two places where the string changes direction (nut and saddles) are where the string most firmly contacts the instrument, and so are the place where some string energy will be imparted to wood, and where that energy can be conserved or lost.

Tilt-back heads, like through-body string anchoring, have in traditional lutherie provided the best sustain, assuming only that the nut is some hard material so as not to soak up vibration.

Although we tappers use string dampeners, I believe this is still true, though I confess I've never tried to measure it scientifically, though I have listened with my ears to hear how long sustains last with various materials.

If you tilt back too much, or if you use gadgets to hold the strings down, then you can risk creating too much friction at that point, so that twisting the tuning peg tightens the string all the way to the nut, but the string is catching on the nut or gadget at that point. Soon after you begin playing, that 'catch' can give way, and the string goes out of tune.

I've been told that the best tilt back angles by experiement seem to be 12 to 14 degrees, but I've not done any experiments on this.

[BigDaddyPoo]

Originally posted by traktor
Tilt-back heads, like through-body string anchoring, have in traditional lutherie provided the best sustain, assuming only that the nut is some hard material so as not to soak up vibration.

Although we tappers use string dampeners, I believe this is still true, though I confess I've never tried to measure it scientifically, though I have listened with my ears to hear how long sustains last with various materials.

I don't see how the nut or string tension at the nut would have any effect on fretted notes. It defies logic. I understand that the more mass your string is attached to on either end, the more sustain you have, but it SEEMS like the only thing you would be sustaining on the nut side of a fretted note would be the unwanted nut side note. Wouldn't the only thing to consider on the nut end be whether or not the string was attached firmly at the proper tension?

I'm not trying to start an argument with anyone, I'm just saying that this doesn't make sense to me.

Did you test the sustain of different nut materials with dampening and fretted notes and notice a difference?

[traktor]

Originally posted by BigDaddyPoo
I don't see how the nut or string tension at the nut would have any effect on fretted notes. It defies logic. I understand that the more mass your string is attached to on either end, the more sustain you have, but it SEEMS like the only thing you would be sustaining on the nut side of a fretted note would be the unwanted nut side note. Wouldn't the only thing to consider on the nut end be whether or not the string was attached firmly at the proper tension?

I'm not trying to start an argument with anyone, I'm just saying that this doesn't make sense to me.

Did you test the sustain of different nut materials with dampening and fretted notes and notice a difference? Big Daddy, it's possible you're correct, and I can't say because I've not done any real scientific test. I think that one's finger on a string at a fret would not stop all vibration within the string beyond that point, and we do know that string dampers aren't enough to stop all string vibration (because you can pluck an open string and hear a note, even though it does die quickly.)

So I don't want to argue either, as I have no real scientific proof on this particular point. It just seemed safest to go with the longest-sustain and most-stable-tuning option, and when that was done, we observed that we attained long sustain and stable tuning.

Prototype Megatar #1 actually had a flat head and string hold-downs, which you can see in this photo of Henri Dupont --

http://www.megatar.com/documents/pressreleases/press_images/HenriDemo-Small.JPG

We could see that the string hold-downs were binding on the string and making tuning less precise, and so in later prototypes we tilted the head. This made the tuning act stable and we also got longer sustain. Go figure.

And so, since that time, we've built tilt-back heads. I've never really tried to get all scientific on this, as we were aiming at a set of results. We followed traditional recommended guidelines, and we got the results, and so we were happy. You've got an interesting point, and what you say seems logical. Maybe someday someone will do more research on this and we'll know more.

[rjgoos]

Traktor wrote:

>...which you can see in this photo of Henri Dupont...<


You know, I have lost track of Henri....he was somewhere between Calcutta and Novosibirsk last time I heard. Any word from him lately?


Jay

[murphy]

he did his best work in his beret-and-dangling-cigarette period.

[traktor]

Originally posted by murphy
he did his best work in his beret-and-dangling-cigarette period. He's clowning, is what it is. Difficult to keep Henri serious. I'm not sure he really even smokes, and I've never seen him in a beret except this once. On the other hand, sometimes he surprises me.

And, rj, no I don't know where he is, although I'm working on method book three at present, including some material which he sent me last month in a very beat up canvas folder, and which, according to Federal Express, was sent from some town called Bogor, which appears to be near Jakarta in the Java Sea. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean he's there.

[JamesH]

Traktor worte:

"In this case we returned to a zero fret, though it makes greater demands on fretwork, because (a) it produces very low string action, (b) you can string it with any strings in any direction or arrangement and the bottoms of the strings are still at the correct height above fret-tops, and (c) you can precisely install it with a Feiten compensation to provide 'in tune' playing in the first few frets as normal guitars cannot do."

So is it correct that the zero fret is placed at the point for "Feiten Compensation" rather than the nut? Is there a compromise in the angle of the zero fret on the non-fanned fret instruments to comensate for Feitin's intonation for the guitar and bass scales of your instrument?

You do not have to share this data... I am getting into some sticky patent ground here and maybe trade secrecy?

Another wacky Idea...

Has anyone made an eleven string touch guitar where there is a higher string and a tuning peg that is placed down lower towards the bridge. I guess there would be a primary nut for the first ten strings then a secondary nut for the eleventh.

After all, then you can go to eleven and one higher.

(read the last line with a british accent...

:D

[rjgoos]

Originally posted by JamesH


Another wacky Idea...

Has anyone made an eleven string touch guitar where there is a higher string and a tuning peg that is placed down lower towards the bridge. I guess there would be a primary nut for the first ten strings then a secondary nut for the eleventh.

After all, then you can go to eleven and one higher.

:D


I don't know if I have envisioned your instrument correctly, do you mean something like a banjo, with an additional string further down the neck, on a shorter scale?


Jay

[BrendaEM]

For those people who use dampers, I think that you only need enough head angle to make sure the strings stay in the nut. It seems that the more contact the strings have with the nut, the louder any ghost notes would be.

I don't see how compensated nuts could help a touch guitar with a damperner on it becasue there are no open notes, and the rest of the frets have equal temperment.

Fretboards are usually radiused to make bar chord'ing easier, but a small diameter radius may interfer with string bending. The fret the string is bent against may not be as high as one after it when pulled diaganally around a radius.

[Wow, that's hard to describe without pictures.]

** Please note: Fretboards are usually no thicker than 1/4" ~4mm. The wider the fretboard, and the smaller the radius, the thinner the edges of the fretboard will be. For instance, you probably cannot make a 12 string instrument with a 10 inch radiused fretbaord, if the fretboard is only 1/4" inch thick.

[I am using a 16" radius on mine. I drew a 32" diameter circle in Photoshop. (Gimp, Illustrator, Inkscape, Blender, or even paper would work.) I measured 1/4" down from the top edge of the circle, and made a line. Using this way, you can visualize and test what the fretboard edges would be like before any wood is cut, or money spent.]

[BigDaddyPoo]

Originally posted by rjgoos
I don't know if I have envisioned your instrument correctly, do you mean something like a banjo, with an additional string further down the neck, on a shorter scale?
What would you call that? TapJo, BanjTar?

Even though you're tapping could you still wear the cool thumb pick?

[traktor]

Originally posted by BrendaEM
I don't see how compensated nuts could help a touch guitar with a damperner on it becasue there are no open notes, and the rest of the frets have equal temperment. Although your ears can easily tell the difference that the Feiten system makes, explaining *why* it works has not been, for me, quite as simple.

One approach is to consider that Pythagoras's formula for the logarhythmic scale fret-placement is theoretically correct, for perfect strings. And when I examine the Feiten formulas, I observe that the very least compensation is done on the very thinnest strings, which I would suppose would be the strings which have the least mass to interfere with their behavior as perfect strings.

I personally think of the heavier strings as having more stiffness, so that the stiffness at attachment ends makes the flexing string effectively shorter for the vibration of higher frequencies. And so the harmonics don't align perfectly, and so when you make compensating length adjustments you can find the actual length which produces best overall harmonics alignment. But this is my personal theory; I've never heard the Feiten folks express it.

And of course stiffness at the nut end shouldn't have much effect on a string stopped at some fret on the neck.

Another way of thinking about Feiten is to imagine the string when it is 'open' as a straight line. Then when you depress it to a fret, even the small distance as we use on tapping instruments, the string is now the two other sides of a triangle, and by definition the two sides must be longer than the original single side. That means the string has been stretched to reach the fret. Does this affect the tuning of the string? You bet it does, by a cent or a few cents, which you can easily see on a lab strobe.

Now if you had a high-action nut, this proclivity would become worse, and if you had a low-action nut, or zero-fret, this proclivity would be minimized. But it's still there.

If the feeling of resistance on your finger is any guide, then when I tap a string near the nut it seems to take a bit more force than when I tap a string near say, fret twelve. I assume that means that the string requires a bit more stretch to be fretted near the nut. And on guitars or tapping instruments without nut compensation, it is in these first few frets that one observes sharpness, as would be reasonable if tapping/fretting there somehow takes more effort and produces more stretching.

How could you relieve this sharpness? If you compensate the nut, the sharpness at the first few frets goes away. You can test this with the scope.

Now, to this day, I do not understand why it seems that fretting near the nut seems to take more effort, and so I don't want to defend this. It's just my observation, and it fits with what the scope will measure.

So, without debating the logic of the objections which have been raised, I done what the Feiten folk told me to do, and my ears and the scope told me that it worked.

And those world-class guitarists cited on the Feiten website, they have discussed the sharpness when they're fretting notes near the nut, and they report great happiness that the bad sharpness has gone away.

In my opinion, logic is, for all humans, truly just a visual aid; we are not adequate to grasp the universe exactly and correctly, and this is why logic seems valid but we perceive paradox all around us.

And so logic is as logic does, and the ears and the scope reveal that sharpness in frets near the nut go away when you compensate the nut, and that's the bottom line for your music. Therefore we compensate the nut. As Spock would say, "It is only logical."

[rjgoos]

Don't feel bad, gang, I've never been able to get my mind around the Feiten system either. With a system of fixed frets, a system of "temperament" is hard to grasp.

I guess I should go read Buzz' patent. Do you have the number, Traktor?


Jay

[traktor]

Originally posted by rjgoos
I guess I should go read Buzz' patent. Do you have the number, Traktor? Alas, there is another mystery. As best I recall, when I looked it up -- search uspto.gov for 'IN/Feiten' -- it seemed as if there are several patents, and some of them seemed pretty much identical. However, on a more philosophical note, getting clarity from the language required by the u. s. patent office is kind of like sow's ear silk-purse extraction.