Here's a couple of guitars..built pretty much the same, the first is fretless, the second one is fretted. On the fretless, the markers and position dots are just inlaid into the edge, but you can do exactly the same as full marker across the face of the fretboard.
Fretless guitars are NOT just for slide - properly made and well set-up with a decently low action they can sound great - no dull thud, but a mellow tone akin to a fretless bass.
There is a third approach that is very doable, cut slots and inlay strips of a contrasting material, usually a sheet of veneer, but maybe even just coloured putty or glue with a pigment added.
I did this once with a broken bandsaw blade on a lap steel, it's pretty much the easiest inlay you can do other than dots
This is also what guys typically do when rendering an unused bass into a fretless
Thank you for the reply and ideas. Would that be for playing with slide or can you fret notes that way? The inlay would be raised at all or do you mean to make it flush? Thanks again!
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Here's a couple of guitars..built pretty much the same, the first is fretless, the second one is fretted. On the fretless, the markers and position dots are just inlaid into the edge, but you can do exactly the same as full marker across the face of the fretboard.
Fretless guitars are NOT just for slide - properly made and well set-up with a decently low action they can sound great - no dull thud, but a mellow tone akin to a fretless bass.
I did this once with a broken bandsaw blade on a lap steel, it's pretty much the easiest inlay you can do other than dots
This is also what guys typically do when rendering an unused bass into a fretless