source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:21:51 -0800 Subject: Cheap Explorations -- the Temporary Guitar From: Steven Rezsutek It was a busy weekend for me, but I now have a microtonal instrument that is a bit less unwieldy than my keyboard. I don't take ultimate inspirational credit for this by any means, but I thought that others would be interested in the success story. I had de-fretted a cheapie classical guitar that I had some time ago, with intent of fretting it to a xenharmonic scale, but hadn't decided which one yet, and I never seemed to get around to placing that order to Stew-Mac. I tried tying frets, using old strings, but was never able to get them to lie flat against the fingerboard. Finally, this past Saturday, the desire to do some exploration overcame the mental barrier about needing to have "real" frets, and a quick trip to the shop produced a handfull of bits of fine 4130 welding wire (not that it matters, but 4130 is a rather musical steel, IMO, at least judging by the bicycle part wind chimes I build a few years ago). A couple of hours later, I had cemented down, trimmed, and filed 31 pieces of wire, fretting the guitar to 22TET, more or less. Dipping the wire into the tube of cement (Duco Cement) provided enough adhesive to hold the fret to the board, even after it had been slid around to fine tune, without making the appearance too unsightly. I had cut the wires long to provide ease of handling, and then snipped off the "handle" when the cement had hardened. The acutal tuning was done by ear, using my synth as a guide, and tuning by unisons and octaves on the first and fifth string (`A'10). Not exactly precision, but it seems good enough for my purposes at the moment, and it actually had a sort of "warm, earthy" feel in its imperfection. By all appearances, this operation can be done numerous times without harming the structural integrity of the instrument and without a slew of specialized tools. The downside is that its accuracy may leave something to be desired (wires not perfectly straight, or not perfectly set, varying intonation, etc.). I call it "temporary" for a couple of reasons: The first is that the wires can be removed with a little acetone, and the finger board sanded if necessary, and recemented down in a different tuning. I had sealed the fingerboard with Minwax wood hardener (or something) when I made it fretless, which seems to both provide a good bond with the cement, and prevent it from soaking into the wood too far. The second is that the whole affair seems rather delicate, so I don't expect it to last all that long before it needs attention. As long as it survives long enough for me to decide whether its tuning-du-jour is worth preserving in a "permanent" fingerboard, though, it will have served its purpose. Now, the fun part begins... :-) BTW, the inspiration came from something I recall reading long ago about the frets of the being adjusted and then fixed with wax. [If anyone knows what instrument that is, could you refresh my memory? I want to say sitar, but I don't think that's correct] Hoping someone finds value in this, Steve Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 18:27 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA16529; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 18:27:55 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA16448 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id JAA01707; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:27:49 -0800 Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:27:49 -0800 Message-Id: <199701271121_MC2-103F-F1D2@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu