Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Beer on November 9, 2009 at 1:42pm

Makes a nice print out for your fret markings. Just enter your scale length (nut to bridge) and how many frets you want, and you're good to go.

No files to download, no incompatibility issues either.

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Permalink Reply by Old Lowe on November 9, 2009 at 4:01pm

It matters a whole lot!
But not really just try to get em as close as ya can a mm here and there isnt a big deal but if you measure from that first mm mistake and go to the end then you have a few extra mm's
Thats why I use a stick with the frets marked on it as a ruler so I can hold it up next to the neck im working on and double or triple check my lines before I cut them.

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Permalink Reply by Three Forks Guitars on November 10, 2009 at 3:23am

I had already cut my frets before you guys posted the links to the software that prints out the cut lines.
Well I went ahead and printed to my scale. My cuts were precise. less than 1/2 mm accurate. I was so proud of my old eyes :)

I'll be using that software from now one though.

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Permalink Reply by Tres Seaver on November 10, 2009 at 3:39am

Beer said:

Makes a nice print out for your fret markings. Just enter your scale length (nut to bridge) and how many frets you want, and you're good to go.

No files to download, no incompatibility issues either.

The link needs some text to make it clickable.

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Permalink Reply by Three Forks Guitars on November 10, 2009 at 3:42am

Tres - That's the best one I've seen - I'll be using it I believe.

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Permalink Reply by Mark on November 11, 2009 at 2:33am

The idea of worrying about accuracies of better than half a millimetre seems pointless to me. If you've got your frets within half a millimetre then you really are doing pretty well. For example, at the 7th fret position on a neck with the typical Fender scale-length of 25.5 inches, half a millimetre is equivalent to about 1/50th of a semitone. Now there are plenty of other factors that affect the tuning or intonation of a guitar and some of those will have a much greater effect than 1/50th of a semitone.

The really important thing to remember is what Old Lowe has mentioned - don't measure the position for a fret from the fret immediately before. Always measure from the same fixed point - usually the nut or "zero fret" position (but the centre-line of the bridge is sometimes an alternative). If you locate each fret from the one before then all the errors you make become cumulative, so that by the time you get to the higher frets you could easily be several millimetres out. Most of the fret calculating spreadsheets and similar aids will give you a series of measurements for each fret from the nut - that's the way to do it.

As an afterthought... even on the best profession guitars, given that the width of fret wire can be a couple of millimetres and there is often a slight flat on top from stoning, I wonder how precisely the actual position of fret-to-string contact matches the theoretical position of the fret.

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Permalink Reply by Andy Stone on November 11, 2009 at 4:00am

Within about 0.3 of a mm
How good can you can line the saw blade over the pencil line anyway?

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