rojarosguitar -> RE: Why no 'zero fret' ? (Nov. 16 2014 11:05:36)
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Complacent? These days? I'm wondering why you say that. I think that was true in the 'good old days' of sixties and seventies (don't beat me because of the precise period), before Japanese and American luthiers started to be serious competition to Spanish guitar makers, whose level was generally, hmm ... These days Spanish makers caught up and there is a lot of competition and innovation pressure - meaning, there is a lot of innovation - all over the place IMHO. Of course there always can be more innovation, so I don't mind your proposal, but I don't think they are a complacent lot... BTW, coming back to the question of the OT: I once did it on a K. Yairi flamenca blanca, which I owned in the seventies (it was a mediocre guitar but the best I could afford that time). It's quite easy to retrofit a 0th fret with a bit of a trick; I just formed a nut that allowed for a small slit just wide enough to allow to put in a piece of fret wire. Here was my 0th fret. The playability was quite nice, but I cant remember anything about the intonation, I didn't know anything about these things that time. But you could try how you like it and then let it a professional guitar maker retrofit it, It is not so difficult to do it properly. I had a lot of discussions with the famous maker Sebastian Stenzel about 0th fret and he explained that the advantages are much smaller that the disadvantages; the main disadvantage I explained in my previous post - no control over intonation. If you work patiently you can bring the nut as much down as you would with a 0th fret. The only advantage I can see over a nut is that the vibration conditions would be the same for the open string as they are for fingered strings; but then, an open string is an open string and has its own unique musical value... quote:
ORIGINAL: hamia I've often thought the same. But I would even go one stage further and say that we need to look into ways to play above the nut. At the moment there seems to be a lot of wasted string up there. We need your type of out-the-box thinking to challenge the luthiers, who, let's face it, have gotten pretty complacent these days.
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