Squiggly Frets Deliver Superior Tone
For years, my violist girlfriend and I have been engaged in the “frets vs. fretless” argument - whether the relative ease of playing on a fretboard makes up for losing the ability to adequately control intonation. Now, it looks like we’re both wrong.
True Temperament Frets...Just Crazy Enough To Work
At NAMM 2009, Swedish company True Temperament debuted a fretting system just crazy enough to work: instead of perfectly straight frets that inevitably rob tone with small overtone inconsistencies, these wiggly frets are precision-geared note by note with hand adjustments and a strobe tuner to deliver superhumanly perfect tone across the entire fretboard. It may look weird, but all testimony reports that it feels just as natural to play…and, judging from this Steve Vai demonstration, they really do make a big difference in tonal consistency.
Once again, the squiggly world wins. Leave it to the Swedes.
Tags: fretboard, frets, harmonics, intonation, NAMM, steve vai, tone, true temperament
I get dizzy just looking at that fretboard…
I actually have been working on something similar to this based on old yamaha fretboard derivations, but no where near as radical! I change gauges of strings so often too so… Im glad the Swedes have made the constants of mathematics easier on all of us luthiers now. Awesome but no new math here right J.R.? LoL “Dan takes big breath and a sigh of relief” That is till somebody wants to pay me to refret their guitar in this way…
they are probably easy to play if you are steve vai. i really look forward to fretwork on one of those…