I want to make music that sounds the way Salvador Dalí's paintings look! Paranoiac-critical!
If you're going to be in Denver, come out, donate, and hear some great music from my friend Neil Haverstick!
Sunday October 12, 2008CCO Benefit Series at Trinity
Trinity United Methodist Church
18th & Broadway, DenverNeil Haverstick, microtonal guitarist
http://www.microstick.netJ. S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3
Neil Haverstick: Spider for 19 tone guitar and orchestra (arranged Blomster)
Bartok: Music for Strings, Percussion, and CelesteFREE (Donations accepted)
So my really talented buddies over at gtroblq.com have managed to instill such a lust for microtones in me that I decided to take my beloved (albeit, cheap) Fernandes Retrorocket X and convert it into a fretless guitar. Now, I'm no luthier and depend heavily on folks who've already done this sort of thing to keep from screwing it up too badly.
Unfretted.com (Jahloon's famous site) has several DIY articles, including the one I mostly used (courtesy of Emre Meydan) to get this project accomplished. I also sought and received advice directly at the gtroblq.com forums.
I decided to post my photo journal of the process (complete photos without commentary available here), so that I might offer my own personal experiences with this relatively easy project.
BTW, I've been playing fretless now for just over a day and I love it. If you're a guitar playing veteran of many years like me, I recommend giving it a try. (Beginners might be a little more frustrated; I recommend starting on a fretted guitar or doing both at the same time).
1. Heat up the fret with a soldering iron, carefully. I would do this until I saw glue seep out from beneath the fret.
2. Use fret pullers to gently remove the fret, starting at one end of a fret and working all the way to the other end. I experienced no significant chipping by doing this slowly, after heating each fret well.
Close-up view of fret removal.
3. Defret complete!! That part was pretty easy.
So long, frets!!!
4. I used links provided by Chris Shaffer to explain how to remove the nut. Here was my first (and really only) problem. When I attempted to gently tap out the cheap, plastic nut, it broke into 3 pieces, and I chipped a small piece of rosewood out of the nut slot! Oops! Fortunately, the piece of rosewood was in one chunk which fit perfectly back in its place, and I had also bought a new graphite nut from Stewart-MacDonald!
Enter the 2-ton, 60-min Epoxy! Not only would I use it to repair the nut slot, but I would also use it to fill the fret slots too!
The new graphite nut I bought from Stewart-MacDonald (bought mainly to aid sustain but now quite necessary to finish the job, considering the original, broken nut)!
5. Mixing the epoxy THOROUGHLY! I should add that I used a razor to clean out the fret slots before proceeding!
6. Using toothpicks to apply epoxy to the slots. This took a while, and I ensured a good application by running the tip of the toothpick along the slot until the epoxy flowed in and along it completely. I eventually used a styrofoam plate to prepare my epoxy (to keep from using old epoxy in subsequent slots).
7. The chipped nut slot glued back together without any problems using the epoxy!
8. Guitar is taped up and fretboard ready for sanding, using grades of sandpaper from 80 to 320 or so. Note the 14" radius block purchased from Stewart-MacDonald and the double-sided tape.
9. Sanding was the toughest part. First, I used the rough sandpaper (80) to remove all traces of excess epoxy. Once I could no longer see any epoxy, I progressed through the grades of sandpaper systematically, ensuring a smooth finish.
Wear gloves and other protection, because rosewood dust can be irritating.
Progress! (Please be okay, strat!)
I also sanded the sides of the neck too, to remove excess epoxy.
Sanding the outside of the nut slot made it hard to tell it had ever chipped.
Voila! Sanding complete! It's a fretless!
10. I removed all the protective masking tape and cleaned up all the rosewood dust (using a vacuum cleaner)! Next, I sanded down the bottom of the new graphite nut, and I lightly sanded the interior of the nut slot to remove any old glue. Then I installed the new nut and new roundwound strings (I didn't glue the nut in this time...I want to be sure it was not too high before gluing it). When I glue it with the next string change, I'll use a few drops of regular wood glue (so that I can remove it again easily if ever necessary).
Playing my new fretless! It was love at first touch and first sound!
UPDATE: Here's a sample of what it sounds like!
I just received a terrific CD, Stick Man, from a good friend of mine, guitarist Neil Haverstick, out in Colorado. One of the many tremendous attributes setting Neil apart from the ocean of competent, fervid guitarists out there is his use of microtones. Neil doesn't typically dabble in the ubiquitous 12-tone realm that most of the rest of us are trapped in; he takes an octave and, instead of dividing it evenly into 12 steps as is the prosaic Western way, he splits it into 19 or 34 equal divisions--hence the label microtones. The resulting music can be very challenging to the banal, jaded listener unwilling to tramp unfamiliar, enigmatic sonic ground. This music can sound out of tune, even to the most highly-trained, educated musician fancying herself tolerant of new or different things.
I'm personally not so jaded in my own listening that I find his non-12-tone music offensive to the ears. Actually, I find it quite refreshing, and I find his exuberance and enthusiasm in its perpetuation and promotion inspirational. I've also read his book, The Form of No Forms, and found it a staggering instructional tool, advancing a new way of learning to understand, compose, and play music. Come to think of it, being the eclectic composer and artist he is, all of Neil's CDs are terrific listening digressions into tasteful, exceptional experimentalism. I've been a fan of his since 1993, and I first read about him when his music was reviewed in Mike Varney's Spotlight column in the December 1985 issue of Guitar Player magazine. At that point I had been playing guitar not even one year, but I remembered how cool he looked holding his ES-335 with the Yin-Yang emblem prominently adhered to the guitar's body; Neil was no posing shredder like the other chaps in Varney's column, trying to convince the magazine's readership he was the next incarnation of Yngwie Malmsteen--all the rage back in those days. It was that review that led me 7 years later to contact Neil and purchase his book, The Form of No Forms. From there we became friends, exchanging our latest projects and occasionally phoning and emailing each other. Since that 1985 review, Neil has appeared in numerous magazine reviews, has played with many prominent, renowned musicians, and has been praised by many of the same. He's among those I count as a musical influence.
Neil introduced me to another master experimentalist named Dan Stearns, who likewise has been honored by many of the same publications that wrote about Neil. I could use many of the same encomiums I listed above and apply them to Dan without inaccuracy. He's just a plain nice guy with extreme loads of talent. Dan plays a fretless guitar and invents his own forms of musical notation to address the microtonal systems he employs. Another really cool thing about Dan is his use of polyrhythms, which is another realm of modern music that can confound all but the most adventurous auditory spirits. Frank Zappa and Steve Vai, two of my other influences, are (in the case of Frank--were) huge proponents of polyrhythms, where you apportion base elements of one meter into odd tuplets ad infinitum. Dividing a quarter note from 3/4 time into 5 sixteenth notes with the last sixteenth further subdivided into 3 thirty-second notes would be a sample polyrhythmic occurrence. Clearly all but the most technically talented of us can conceive and, much less, accurately play such forms, but Dan can do this stuff blind-folded. His guitar playing sounds almost computer-like in its virtuosic, accurate rhythmic interpretation of these fast tuplets. He's got chops for days. I'm lucky; Neil and Dan are two guys I know personally who just happen to be big influences on my own music and my life. I think other guitarists would benefit by adding them both to their influences list.
