Fanned fretting puzzlement

[Nick]

Perry or Jeremy or anybody that has done a fanned fret neck I was wondering if you could 'illuminate' me into the confusing ways of this new fangled/old technique.
I am just tossing around thoughts of doing my first fan fretted guitar so during my research I came across this guy laying out a board

youtu.be/ if you don't want to watch the whole thing, the bit that has me puzzled is from 9:40 in
Is laying his rule along the angle of the string and marking from there the correct way to do it? Just having trouble wrapping my head around this, coming from a conventional 'square nut to centreline' background. It just seems that by laying the rule down on an angle would foreshorten the distances between frets slightly in relation to the boards centre line .
Any advice/help would be appreciated.

[Nick]

Following on from that, this isn't a question about how as such but http://www.novaxguitars.com/licensing.html. How can they patent a system that's been around for eons, unless they fan theirs a 'special' way that's different from normal fan fretting?

[jeffhigh]

They probably should not have been granted a patent for it, but it would be expired by now anyhow. I believe they are licencing the use of the trademarked term Fan-fret.

[kiwigeo]

Following on from that, this isn't a question about how as such but http://www.novaxguitars.com/licensing.html. How can they patent a system that's been around for eons, unless they fan theirs a 'special' way that's different from normal fan fretting?

Call it "fanny fret" and you won't have any issues

"Multi scale" is a more meaning full term and nobody owns it.

[old_picker]

Fanny fret I do like that :[)

There are probably good reasons supporting the use of a multi scale fret board apart from making them desirable to players with too many guitars and too much money.

I have been playing straight fret guitars for over 50 years and never felt I needed any better intonation or playability than that. I am no virtuso and am a little puzzled by what I have missed out on that could have made me a big rock and roll star or top line jazz or studio player?

[scripsit]

It's not about intonation, and most fanned fret guitars with only a mild multiscale difference of 20-25mm are (reportedly) more or less 'transparent' to the player, who often doesn't notice anything different in playability.

They are effective for open and modal tunings, particularly when the bass strings are tuned down significantly (think C or even B instead of E). With a longer scale length, normal thickness bass strings feel less floppy than on a standard guitar.

I believe that 7 and 8 string guitarists are particularly fond of multiscale so that they can have rock stable bass strings available, and this might demand more extreme scale length spreads. Some electric styles are based around the ability to drop bass strings way down.

This is all from what I've read and heard, although I've experienced the floppy bass problems in various C Tunings on normal guitars. I'm still looking forward to my first play with a fanned fret acoustic.

Kym

[kiwigeo]

I'm still looking forward to my first play with a fanned fret acoustic.

Kym

Hope the wait isn't too long

[Nick]

Ok, the more I'm thinking about it the more the fog is lifting. I've just laid out the nut to first fret with string in my Cad package and set the fret out at the correct distance, I then measured the string length to the first fret (the hypotenuse of the triangle effectively) and there was only a difference of 2 hundreths of a millimeter. When marking out with a rule you couldn't even mark to that many decimal places accurately so I'm guessing that it doesn't matter whether you mark off the frets along the line of the angled string or from the string/nut intersection point and parallel with the centre line. Just flew in the face of my conventional thinking but then with an angled nut all things to do with the fingerboard must be different I guess.

[kiwigeo]

Ok, the more I'm thinking about it the more the fog is lifting. I've just laid out the nut to first fret with string in my Cad package and set the fret out at the correct distance, I then measured the string length to the first fret (the hypotenuse of the triangle effectively) and there was only a difference of 2 hundreths of a millimeter. When marking out with a rule you couldn't even mark to that many decimal places accurately so I'm guessing that it doesn't matter whether you mark off the frets along the line of the angled string or from the string/nut intersection point and parallel with the centre line. Just flew in the face of my conventional thinking but then with an angled nut all things to do with the fingerboard must be different I guess.

I don't quite follow the triangle business. I work things out by doing up a full scale drawing. I start with the desired scale lengths of the outer and inner string and the fret I want to be perpendicular (or close to as is often the case.......usually fret 7 or . I use the fret2find calculator which allows you to dial in the desired perpendicular fret and then spews out nut to fret/saddle to fret distances for all strings.

String spread at nut and saddle go into the drawing along with fret positions calculated from fret2find (or any fret position calculator). I join the nut to fret positions on the outer and inner string and automatically Ive drawn the nut to fret intersections for the remaining strings...no need to calculate same.

Using a drawing one can visualize the nut and saddle angles and also work out other issues such as string run from rear of nut to machine head posts (esp critical if you plan on a straight string pull headstock). On an acoustic, going multiscale affects just about everything in regards to the layout of the instrument (esp on a falcate braced instrument).

[Nick]

I work things out by doing up a full scale drawing.

That's what I did but using a CAD package, it's capable of working to an accuracy of three or four decimal places, more than I'd ever be able to reproduce in the real world (unless I had a CNC machine) but for the purposes of solving my mind block to this problem it fitted the bill perfectly. As I found, there was only a 0.002 difference between the nut to first fret position when it runs in a straight line from the nut & a line parallel to the neck centreline and the length of the string from nut to first fret, I couldn't have measured that using a pencil and rule.

I don't quite follow the triangle business.

I did a quick sketch in paint to try and illustrate what I was getting at about the triangle, basic Trig

String spread at nut and saddle go into the drawing along with fret positions calculated from fret2find (or any fret position calculator). I join the nut to fret positions on the outer and inner string and automatically Ive drawn the nut to fret intersections for the remaining strings...no need to calculate same.

Yeah I get that bit

[jeffhigh]

Even on a regular fretboard, no string will have exactly the nominal scale length due to the splay of strings from narrow at the nut to wider at the saddle.
But the spacing of the frets remains in proportion along the string path and that is what matters

[kiwigeo]

Even on a regular fretboard, no string will have exactly the nominal scale length due to the splay of strings from narrow at the nut to wider at the saddle.
But the spacing of the frets remains in proportion along the string path and that is what matters

Jeff,

On a regular fretboard the string splay will introduce a minute error because you're assuming same string length for all strings. On a multiscale instrument the way I lay out the fretboard is by measuring along string scale length for outer and inner most strings..ie there is no error due to string splay at nut. I haven't dived into the maths fret2find uses but Ive compared the output from same with my own manually calculated fretboard layout and they pretty well agree.

[jeffhigh]

Yes I understand what you are saying Martin
I am not talking errors here, just pointing out that the same principles apply, it is the ratios of the fret placement to string length along the string path(before compensation) that matters

The way you are setting out is exactly how I would do it too.

[kiwigeo]

This stuff gives me a headache...I'm off for a bike ride. I'll watch Nicks video clip and then try and digest it all....

At this stage I guess I should spill the beans...I'm right in the middle of a multiscale Gore OM build. A high chance of f*** ups with this baby so I was going to wait until the thing was built before posting up pics. Thought I might as well come clean as my progress may help Nick with his build and vice versa. As a sneak preview....here's the rosette I've just finished. It's Jason Kostal inspired and the wood is from a burl of Coobah.

[simso]

I dont understand all the different views put up above, just may be me over thinking what people are saying.

Simple process.

Do two scale lengths on your E strings, example treble E 24.5 inch and Bass E 26 Inch (make it any scale length you want), mark the fret positions on each of these scales, start with say the 7th fret being in line with each other like a normal fretboard

Take a ruler, and draw a line at each fret position, connecting the treble and bass side, you now have a multi scale fretboard, as the A/D/G/B strings are located from the two E's

Steve

[Nick]

I dont understand all the different views put up above, just may be me over thinking what people are saying.

Simple process.

Do two scale lengths on your E strings, example treble E 24.5 inch and Bass E 26 Inch (make it any scale length you want), mark the fret positions on each of these scales, start with say the 7th fret being in line with each other like a normal fretboard

Take a ruler, and draw a line at each fret position, connecting the treble and bass side, you now have a multi scale fretboard, as the A/D/G/B strings are located from the two E's

Steve

That's what my initial question was Steve, in the video he measures off the fret positions along the centrelines of the respective E strings, I wondered if this was the correct practice or whether you measure in distances parallel with the centreline (still from the front face of the angled nut) as in "conventional" marking out.