What do you think about a fretless electric guitar?

Question:My son is rebuilding an electric guitar and is talking about putting a fretless neck on it...a Fender Strat. This sounds a bit crazy to me. Aside of the frets making it easier to play, does it effect the sound? Any thoughts are appreciated.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: My son is rebuilding an electric guitar and is talking about putting a fretless neck on it...a Fender Strat. This sounds a bit crazy to me. Aside of the frets making it easier to play, does it effect the sound? Any thoughts are appreciated.

The only comparison I have is a fretless bass... I really haven't heard of a fretless guitar before...

A fretless bass will really mellow the tone out - I think that no frets means a less sharp attack, in the same way that playing fingerstyle differs from playing with a pick. I *imagine* that a similar effect would be heard on having a fretless guitar.

I think the biggest problem a fretless guitar will suffer from is intonation - especially when you play chords. Your playing has to be extremely precise - if it isn't you will definitely hear it. Frets give us that "fudge" factor. But you already knew that...

Okay, so I just did a smidgen of web research, and I've heard basically that same sentiment echoed elsewhere.... melody and 2-note chords are okay, but anything more than that is basically unfeasible.

If your son is willing to live with that, then go for it!

Saul

Yes it affects the tone. Larry Corryel (sp?) did some work with a fretless electric on a duet album named "Splendid" back in like the '80s I think (I have it on vinyl at home and haven't listened to it in years). The effect is basically the same as a fretless bass, where sliding is now a smooth transition instead of a stepped one. The main difficulty will be that for every note played on the neck, the tuning of that particular note will be dependent on the finger position and to a very exacting degree. Minor changes in finger position will detune a note, but it won't be the guitar that's out of tune, it'll be the player. Remember that any fingered note is dependent on the distance from the fret to the bridge. Since the fret is fixed, there's no change. With a fretless the note's pitch will be the distance from the finger to the bridge. Also a fret is metal, a bridge is metal, so it's metal to metal, whereas a fretless now allows the wood of the fretboard to have an impact on the tone as well.

A fretless guitar is actually easier to play than a guitar with raised frets. This assumes there are fret lines on the neck. Without fret lines it is like playing a violin and that can be dicey. The only problem that I have run across (I play a fretless Fender jazz bass) is that you can get some slapping of the strings on the neck. Hope this helps.

If he's determined to make the guitar fretless, I'd strongly recommend he install flush fret markings on it at the very least, otherwise he's going to find it difficult if not impossible to play chords with any degree of accuracy of intonation.

As far as sound goes, having a fretless neck does make for some nice liquid sounding slides between notes :-)

Adrian Belew played a fretless electric on King Crimson's 'Three of a Perfect Pair' album. I've seen photos of Elliott Sharp playing one too. It's more difficult to play because the intonation is harder to get right, so your son will have to learn to hit the notes very accurately. (Violin/cello/upright bass experience would help, here.) But it has a uniquely wobbly sound and can be quite sexy and interesting. I wouldn't personally do that to a perfectly good Fender Strat, but that's because I'm poor - if I owned a Fender Strat I wouldn't dare modify it.