Well, I Thought I'd Seen It All

[Munurmunuh]

Paul Reed Smith made a half and half neck one-off guitar for this Youtuber. A nice demo of it comes at 8'50"

PRS half fretless guitar

[AndyTravis]

55 minutes ago, Ricky Rioli said:

Paul Reed Smith made a half and half neck one-off guitar for this Youtuber. A nice demo of it comes at 8'50"

PRS half fretless guitar

That is cool.

Chronos from Venom had a Jazz Bass like this in about 1997.

That little riff with the high note is a real ear worm.

[Monkey Steve]

Pretty sure that Scott Ian has a half-fretted guitar, but that was more a statement about him being the rhythm  guitarist and not needing to venture above the 12th fret

[Stub Mandrel]

Question...

Why do people assume the fretboard downstream of the last fret needs to be at the same level as the fretboard in the

fretted part?

If it rises rapidly after the last fret to be level with the top of the frets the join will be (almost) seamless.

[Stub Mandrel]

Also even without it's not impossible to imagine it playing OK.  I had a go of a mustang a few days ago and ran out of frets but could 'bluff' fret 20 on the G string by pressing it down onto the tail of the fingerboard

[Maude]

19 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Question...

Why do people assume the fretboard downstream of the last fret needs to be at the same level as the fretboard in the

fretted part?

If it rises rapidly after the last fret to be level with the top of the frets the join will be (almost) seamless.

See my posts earlier in the thread. 🙂👍

[chris_b]

On 16/11/2020 at 15:15, stewblack said:

Not the finish so much, I like that, it's the fretboard. 

I've done many gigs where that number of frets would be just fine.

[Stub Mandrel]

On 17/11/2020 at 11:42, Maude said:

You appear to be getting rather worked up over someone not understanding what you see as basic physics. Yet I don't understand why you, or anyone else, hasn't thought of the, to me, blindingly obvious answer to the problem of the high action on the fretless part. Ask yourself this, why does the board have to be the same height along its length? If the fretless part was the same height as the top of the frets then you could achieve a nice low action on both the fretted and fretless areas, whichever way around they were. Even better action could be achieved for fretless if the fretless part were at the lower end as the nut could be filed right down, nearly to the board as a fretless should be. 

Some people don't/can't visualise things the way that others can, but there's no reason to belittle them. 

🙂

It really winds me up when people use a time machine to copy my posts 🙂

[lee650]

On 16/11/2020 at 15:28, Doctor J said:

Cronos went fretless from the 12th fret on many of his basses in the 80's

I was going to mention that! I met him in the early 90s and he told me about his semi fretless. I thought it was a really cool idea,As a lot of fretless playing tends to be higher/more melodic 😁

[itu]

Carved frets were mentioned earlier. I remember seeing a Lane Poor Minima and a Bond g-word.

The first Ashula (the white one) was a chore for me. The sound change was so big, that changing between fretted and fretless was not a option within a song. Soloing up with two strings could be a possibility, but I am a true bassist which equals no so lo.

[Chris2112]

The fretted/fretless hybrid doesn't surprise me too much. I have never seen one of those instruments in person, but they used to be shown on ye olde internet as curiosities. The actual bass in the first post though, good grief, it is vile. Looks like it's had a dip in a bathtub full of faeces.