Making a Fret Position Template plus an explanation of fret position and nut compensation
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- Опубликовано: 30 июл 2024
- I made a template for use with a mitre block, to accurately cut the fret slots to a precision of better than 0.05mm.
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Where's Susan? Still watching your videos, Still loving them. You are brilliant, informing and enriching. Come back, we miss you.
please continue your long technical rambles. This is some of the most informative content on guitar physics that i've ever found on youtube. And i'm a long-time guitar tech with an interest in physics and addiction to youtube haha. Honestly, top stuff
Thank you for taking the time to go into the details, very useful technical information and the equation is also what I was looking for.
A tip for others, before starting a cut with a saw it is more accut=rate to make a small 'groove' with a triangualr needle file. Hold the file so that one face is vertical and this is aligned with your scriber mark and the angled side cuts into the wate. That means that your saw is accurately located in the correct position when beginning your cut. Then it doesn't matter how you hold your tongue.
The most lucid explanation of the the twelfth root of two rule I've encountered.
I don't think you overcomplicated the explanation. You did a great job of explaining compensation and I learned a lot. Thank you.
Aluminium is a pretty awful stuff to file as it is so soft it will clog the teeth on the file - known as 'pinning'. To avoid pinning it is worth rubbing the file on some ordinary blackboard chalk. This fills the teeth with a soft dust that prevents the aluminium from clogging them up while still allowing them to cut.
She's using files that are specifically made for aluminum. Dork!
Thank you Peter for the tip. Unlike the rather rude David, not all of us have specialist aluminium files (or even knew they existed) or would buy a set just for one small job.
Interesting. I'll keep that in mind.
Peter Little rubbing with a little paraffin helps
We used to use a pinning card fixed to a wooden paddle, specifically for clearing the file, they were like little wire hooks. Worked very well
I just bought a aluminum ruler, then a 25 1/2" scale length 22 fret jig online. I marked the lines from that to my ruler, then took a diamond cutting wheel for my Dremel 4000 and and notched the locator pin slots into the ruler with that. My locator pin was a piece of fret wire .006 which made it very precise tot he jig I bought. Saved me hours of work and all for under $20.00 US.
Another great video Susan. I liked your explanation at the beginning.
Susan, I’m a mathematics professor, and you’re a very good teacher, and you know your physics as well as math. Great video!
Yay Susan! thank you it is a joy to see you in action teaching it.
What patience you have Suzy, complex measurements are not my strong point, so well done
I'm so glad you explained things in detail. I'm a detail oriented person and it matters. I don't quite understand the problems with the bridge so I hope you can go into more detail at some point. As far as the parallax, you need to stand the ruler on edge. Use a length of square aluminum tube and double sided tape to attach the ruler. It's much faster and far more accurate that way. Cheers and thanks from a Yank
Excellent description of the issues involved in doing a fret board truly ideal.
Well explained. I created my own spread sheet years ago as well. That's the easy way determine the locations for any scale length.
I loved the idea of the compensated nut. So many things can foul up the intonation, even finger pressure or string action. The comp nut idea is brilliant! Or even shorten the fretboard, (which you mentioned) Thanx!
I come from a family of engineers and I lectured Maths and Electronics. I like your videos for that reason, also as you are a female guitar " Geek" . I build guitars, have done, all sorts for twenty years, repairing and modifying since 1980.Currently building a Les Paul Jr. pour moi. Thanks for showing me this as i enjoy the precision involved. My favourite scale is my son's Danelectro U2 - 52 ( 25"- can't bear to talk mm as I use Imperial measurements to the thousands of an inch).Twenty -five inches seems the perfect scale length to me for both acoustics and electrics. Thanks again, have seen some of your stuff and I bet you 100 quid you're an engineer. I enjoy your posts.
Terry from Oz..
Susan, you rock! This was very good. I made a maple 28.625" scale baritone neck back with truss channel that is screaming for a fretboard now. Issue is, most pre-slotted bass fretboards will not give the needed number of frets once the fretboard is cut to the third fret as necessary for the 28.625" scale, even the 24 fretted fingerboards will loose a few of the top frets on the board. So, really thinking about getting an unslotted and doing that work myself. Being an R&D tech at a big medical company I have access to good tools and resources. Thanks for such a well explained and reasonably obsessive capture of the required elements to good precision and accuracy. There is obviously a lot that can go wrong in creating a template that may not be intuitively perceivable, initially. Well done and keep up the good work Susan! - Phil
Dear Susan, in the book I read in my early adolescence, it was recommended to mark the neck using a compass and a constructed triangle, in which one leg was the calculated scale, and the second was some fraction of this scale. The size of the fret was postponed from the perpendicular at the end of the triangle and transferred to the leg of the scale with a compass, where the perpendicular was again built, and so on, until the required number of frets. Accurate verification is carried out at three points: 5th, 7th and 12th frets, which corresponds to the quarter, 1/3 and half - octaves. This method seems to me to be faster and reasonably accurate. A compass with needles gives such a small error that it can be trusted for up to 5 measurements in a row.
In this case, the error does not accumulate and will depend on the sharpness of the needles and the correctly selected semi-friable material. For example, drawing Whatman paper.
The markup itself could be applied along the center line of your ruler of the ruler template and drilled small holes in these places. This would allow you to carry the template over the overlay. If you install the side stop, this way you would get a template with parallel guides. By moving the template over the holes, you will get a series of strictly parallel stops when you mark the cuts in the fretboard. You will need one more point - a stop for one of the edges of the ruler. Then the entire plane of the template ruler will be defined unambiguously.
And finally. If you ensure the absence of accumulation of errors, then the accuracy is better set to 0.1 mm, this is significantly lower than the sound-frequency difference thresholds of human hearing.
As a mathematician and engineer, you should know that if the error is non-systematic and does not accumulate, then statistically it flattens out, and the accuracy is limited to special tolerances.
Thank you for your excellent video.
It was the maths which was bothering me but you got it over so well.
Much appreciated.
Have really enjoyed your vids on fret slotting / thanks so much for posting these. Awesome 😎
Very impressive and informative, as usual. Very much enjoy your vids. Thank you.
Fascinating - thank you. I'm never going to do any of this but it explains why, decades ago, my Strat benefitted from the odd slice of matchstick at the nut. Ok, that may have been, er, less than an optimal solution but it did solve some open string tuning issues, long before I'd heard the term 'compensated nut'. I'm also ok with a bit of maths, so thanks for that too.
Great presentation.
Loved the math!
I surprised myself at being interested - no fascinated - by your explanation of the fret position. Thank you for explaining it, and no you didnt overly complicate it for me. I am now much wiser as to the WHY relating to freboards as distinct from the WHAT. And nut compensation was something i hadn't ever heard of. I'm not sure if many luthiers actually know about it - perhaps they've been compensating by the thickness of half the thickness of the saw kerf and not even realising it or something. Anyway, thank you for a fascinating video. And you can rightly be proud of yourself for making a template that's so good.
Nerdarific video! Has been awhile since I took physics, but I remember working out these proofs in the back of the chapter once.
I love this video so much of what I love about the Star Wars universe, or maybe more, You are a great teacher relly great.
Thank you for showing how to get the needed precision with simple tools, as well as providing such a clear explanation of the spacing and needed corrections. If you stand your precision rule on edge, you can avoid parallax errors. I want to try this, but want to think of something to hold the file square as it's used.
Absolutely! It was drummed into me from an early age (8 years old) that a ruler is for 'ruling lines' and a scale is for measuring. With the scale vertical to the work you can locate a sharp scriber in the indentation of the marking.
BTW, although it is satisfying to engineer a tool by hand, the best way is to enrol in an relevant evening class. e.g. "I want to make a fret position scale/jig - I have the files for your CNC machine"!
Great vid . I started trimming 1mm from the board end after reading prs did the same.there was no math involved🙃🙃.
I finally understand the concept.
Full marks for doing this I am sure you lost a lot of people with the technical stuff, but for me it is essential to understand how a fretted instrument works, and what the shortfalls are. Everything is not equal in the measuring world ( as I am sure you know). The calipers you are using are fairly accurate, but are not really accurate enough. Worth getting a small micrometer for really accurate measurements, and a set of gauge blocks. maybe a set of spring calipers is also worth the investment ( they can be had cheaply). Makes life easier to check slot sizes and parallelism. Even if your layout is very accurate ( hm), what about the method of cutting the slot. Saw blade flatness and perpendicularity, runout of the arbor and so on. I think the accuracy of the fret layout is often overlooked in how some instruments play better than others, and sound better. ON the subject of compensated nuts, you can buy them pretty cheaply on Ebay. Check out Axemasters.
Fun isn't it?
Hi Susan, as always fun and interesting to watch. I thought I'd tell you I made my fret templates with the compensation of half the kerf of the saw and it turned out fine. A compensated nut can be made later if necessary. You thought it might be wrong because it's not something everyone would notice, but normally people doesn't have to notice this issue when slotting a fretboard. They usually either use a commercial fret template that has this compensation (or not) or use a rule and mark the positions from the end of the fretboard (or nut slot). Anyway, as you so well described, it doesn't harm to compensate and either way is fine.
Nicely done video! I have used chalk dust, and candle wax applied to my files to avoid the Aluminum from clogging the file. Careful not to use wax on anywork that will require finishing. Prevents the finish from sticking! Candle wax is also a great lubricant for doing finishing cuts on mills and lathes with Aluminum
OMG. I finally understand this, thank you so much.
Thanks for a great video. The pre-amble was super ! Filled in a lot of holes for me. Cheers
The ‘long intro’ was Definitely useful, Susan, thanks for that. Very interesting dive in.
Hi Susan, l made a template very similar, to this but instead of slots l made a small punch with a steel dowel and two plates either side and punched a semi circle on the edge of the template to locate a pin made from the steel I used as the punch. It all worked very well,as ever it's only as accurate as you make it.cheers Rob .... p.s.Saves all that tedious filling!
Wow, very indepth look at this. thank you
thank you for this in depth explanation!
As an engineer, I LOVE this video. Infinite detail about oh so many esoteric string stretching effects. And I'm just doing this to build a cigar box guitar! I'd go broke if I tried to make a living as a luthier.
Susan sei bravissima!!!
Wow. This was an eye opener.
Beautifully explained!! Thanks so much!
When I first saw the bubble contents on your shirt, I wondered what they were about. I didn't even think about it, but when I saw the C², it was so obvious. I wish I would have read through the bubbles and figured it out myself.
Loved the "mathematics of guitars" intro!
I LOVE your channel!
First time I heard/read someone mentioning the idea of shortening the distance from nut to the first fret, after watching a lot on YT and reading on the www. Wondered why this is not generally done by luthiers and factories…
I (now 54) started 7 years ago to learn to play and shortly after made my kit build modified telecaster (my avatar).
It had intonation issues and I noticed by eye that the nut was too far away from the first fret. I measured, and first segment was 0,5mm too long. After the plastic nut broke, I bought a steel nut that happened to be luckily 1mm too thick. I decided to cut 1mm off the fretboard having a compromised compensation in mind. Result: a very good intonation possible! (Nut slots cut 0,2mm higher than a zero fret would be.)
On a LP type I made a casted brass nut with a overhang individual compensation for each string. Tested before with a plastic shim under the strings that got fine tuned as required. With the final measurements I made a mold and casted with molten brass screws😊. Result: beautiful harmony along the whole fretboard (beside better sustain and more harmonic overtones).
Great video as always, the intro was candy for a mathophile!
I don't know if I ever gonna make any guitar but this video helped me to understand. And it is a big step forward. Music is a nicer and beautiful side of mathematics. Surprise, surprise... ;-) Thanks for your effort. Great job.
Very, very helpful! THANK YOU!
how come math at 73 years makes perfect sense, when back in the day, say 15 or 16 years old I didn't want to have anything to do with it??
Hormonal eruption?
You finally got over girls?
Because NOW you see the REASON for it!
Fabulous explanation. Need more of this.
No Susan this was an excellent presentation. If someone watching is unable to grasp the teaching they definitely should not even be attempting to build a guitar or at least the more complicated aspects of the instrument. Good stuff girl loved it! Peace.
Absolutely brilliant thanks 🙏
7:30 I had same thoughts! Nobody could understand what I am talking about! Many thanks!!!!!!
I wouldn't have the patience to make my fret templates. I don't think the time required to make them worth it. I rather bought them. Kudos to you.
Hello Susan, I see a nice Bridgeport in your future, would have made this a lot easier. Keep up the great work and videos. Thank You
at: 0:22 "A Lump of "Al-U-Minee-Um"! Gotta love it mates! Susan, you are one sharp Bird, for sure. Thanx for the knowledge!! WOW! No wonder I buy my templates from STEWIE! STAINLESS (I Have broken an Acrylic one!), for $51.64. That's about $2.35 a fret, for a 22 fret scale!! Gb g
susan..you are the best at explaining the important details of the physics involved in guitar building..you should start a guitar building school..well, i guess that you have in a sense with your online training..you are an amazing individual...thanks for your excellent videos..wondering where you are and why you have not posted anything in the last year..i hope that corona did not get to you and that you rather ran out of ideas or are just taking a hiatus..
I suspected as much when it comes to nut compensation. I've got a couple of pre-slotted fretboards with zero fret slots and was wondering where to cut them off for the nut. Thanks for confirming what I was thinking. This will make learning much less expensive. ("Experience is the best teacher, s'long as the price ain't too dear" - everyone in the state of Maine - U.S.)
You are so articulate, articulate to the point that you will be remembered.
Just remembered :)
Just, being just.
Being remembered :)
When you run that hack saw, I cringe ):
Ok, not a hack saw, a file.
Tension....,., it felt like a hack saw.
You are very smart!! I wonder if you would do me a favor and tell me what the measurements are for a guitar fret board at 1/4 scale! ?? It don't need to be perfect just close for looks thanks a bunch
Now that I know the math calculations... i am compelled to build really long playable guitars for extra tall people and tiny ones for dwarfs haha.,.. kind of like custom made golf clubs. JK :) tyvm for a GREAT tutorial... i think i learned what i set out to learn on youtube today! Subbed!
Hello Susan, great video. Would you agree that Evertune system theoretically eliminates the need for nut compensation as it removes the sharpening of the note when fretting a string ?
So, from what you said about nut compensation, it would seem that the higher the action the bigger the nut compensation required?
Buzz Feinten figured that out with his componsated tuning system,but its never 100%,you did a great job explaining this,well done
+michaeladam caira I'm not 100% convinced by the Buzz Feiten as you need to tune the strings slightly differently and a lot of tuners can't cope with that. Also, I use a lot of different tunings and I'm not sure the Buzz Feiten system is compatible with that. However, I haven't used it, so maybe I'm over-reacting, but I believe it's more than simple nut compensation
Susan Gardener the buzz feiten system is just exactly what you are talking about. The tuning offsets are just a slight improvement which essentially evens out the 'out of tuneness' of each note across the fretboard.
Check out the patent document. He has a slightly different compensation dependant on whether it's electric, acoustic, bass etc. Can't remember off the top of my head. I think a 25.5" scale compensation is to move the nit 0.75mm toward the bridge.
Great video by the way 👍
After you have arrived at the exact measurements of the fret positions and have laid them out on your fixture, do you then go back and lay out 1/2 of your pin size each way front to back of each pin location?
Excellent explanation of the why. Really excellent. But you are making the how much more difficult than needed... Tape the fretboard blank and the precision ruler to a plank with the scale against the edge farthest from you. Align the measurement with the kerf of your precision miter box and make the cut.
This results in precision down to about half of the scale on your ruler. 128th of an inch for me. I have a miter box that I made just for this that does not use a top brace at the kerf so that I can see better, and I use an optivisor. It only takes 20 minutes or so to cut a custom scale fret board.
Nice tutorial.
The wound string is perpendicular to the string core. It is the perpendicular winding and not so much the added thickness that makes the stiffness relationship different between the wound and unwound strings.
Very Very clear.
Due to watching your Videos and so having great confidence in your choices of tooling I've brought a Triton MOF001 router. I would like to know the thread size of the bolts for attaching it to a table, I think they are either 1/4" BSW or 1/4" UNC but wondered if you can confirm. I have searched the WWW but cant find the info. I still listen to the "Blackbird" video every now & again. The technical parts of your videos are well over my head I'm afraid but the machining is Very Good.
You are the first and only one to mention that the string is too stiff at the saddle to vibrate. I can add that for every harmonic higher than the base note the note is slightly higher. I put the guitar into an oscilloscope and saw that if the base note is dead on the first harmonic is sharp and the second harmonic is sharper still etc. I put it down to the aspect ratio of the string thickness to the string length. The thinner the string the less the effect. This is why we tune down the low E a few cents , the A a bit less and D right on then again G flat a few cents B a bit less and E right on to make it sound right to the ear on average.
So do we need to do some nut "anti-compensation" with an Evertune bridge?
yikes!! guess I should have paid attention to math back when I was in school :) great video, thanks
Has anyone tried inputting the slot numbers into a cad program and making a template (in ply or pref, acrylic) on a laser cutter?
On Fender scale electrics you actully get the guitar quite decently in tune by moving the whole nut inwards 1.0 mm. That is so good that I find it hardly worth the effort to make an actual compensated nut.
+esa062 good to know!
There is a RUclips video that suggests temporarily placing a cocktail stick next to the nut, retuning and checking if this is an improvement. A cocktail stick is typically 2mm diameter so the string contact is at ~1mm. For steel strings their is also the James Taylor tuning method - 1st through 6th string: -3, -6, -4, -8, -10, -12 cents.
Susan, I have a question. Say I have a non-lined fretless neck of the 34" long scale Fender Jazz Bass neck and wish to have the Short Scale frets on it, can I go or say have the 24 frets? Then I replace the bridge in order to have the right position and adjust the intonation. Is my way of thinking correct to have the more frets, say the 2 octaves or more frets on a Fender bass neck? The reason why I am asking this is that I love the grip of the Jazz bass and in need of the 24 frets for the phrases I used to play with my stolen custom Alembic which I had a custom order it with the exact same width and shape of my old Fender Jazz. It made me down for a while but I saw a bass player with the non-stock (Fender had the 24-fret Jazz Bass neck bolted on to the body as "Fender" usual way model) but 21 frets) and I thought to how he could do that. Maybe by the luthier. But now it seems as I have found the way. Is it possible to have the two-octave fretboard by using the fretless Fender neck to the 24-fret short scale bass? And is such work could be ordered to the luthier which its shop does all sorts of works from repair t simple fret replacement of an electric guitar? I got me a full kit of the same Alembic copy assembly from the pickups and the noise canceler pickup like thing in the middle to the power supply/ stereo out cannon out with the non-stereo regular jack. then I can have a custom bolt-on neck 24 fret bass. BTW, I had my bass with real bolt, not the screw-on neck system by seeing the IKEA furniture and I did the modification by using the same round nut. The ones which come to the top side (left side viewing the instrument) semi-glue set (dub of the Loctite jelly worked just fine) and the strength of the neck attached to the body went up as high as 190% (using the automotive tensile strength checker meter.) By having this, having the bend effect sound while holding the head and the upper horn of the cutaway during the performance, the tuning of the strings stayed! Use this method Susan, for your customers who want more accuracy while playing wild on stage. It works! And this bolt can be ordered and made by the ordinary machinist. The machinist shop in my home town took the order with no problem with the M figure diameter of the bolt and the made from round stainless steel bar. It could be your special working menu. This works on the dead spots, too. Please advise for having more frets by making the short scale (34" to 30" or 32" medium scale) to have the more frets. Thank you. Currently, I am applying for a patent for using this for adding the more strength and more.
i love you and this video
This is interesting and my 2nd time through.
Very good Susie, especially the pre-amble, I just love your presentation and admire your work.
I'm coming to your videos a touch late, I know, but you throw up some interesting points, particularly regarding compensated nuts and the accidental (or deliberate) saw kerf issue shortening of the first fret ratio. Question; has it ever been a consideration to saw the nut end of the fretboard at an angle?
Accurate measurement of a slot..............feeler gauge! Squaring a line from a scribed mark..........put the scriber on the mark first, then slide the square to it. Also regarding your parallax issue.....have the rule sitting on edge, not the side. Slight niggle it's a try square not a set square!!!
thanks for the precise explanation. There should be more Susan Gardener s in the world
@31.20 I learned to use dividers to transfer measurements from the scale to the work piece. It eliminates the parallax problem.
That is great thanks
beats $65 bucks CDN at the big store down in the States :) great job, thanks a lot
Don't worry about being too complicated at times, people's eye's will just glaze over until it gets easy to understand again!
Excelent. Thanks.
I really enjoyed this video. If there is one thing that you can possibly add, could it be that the nut compensation is from the pushing the string on to the fret actually is what is making the string tension higher along with the note's pitch.
What is the general rule of thumb for acceptable accuracy, my nylon string fretboard has a few slots out by around half a mm, being a classical, I thought that should work. It is my first one and thought that wasn't too bad but on an electric would that be okay?
+Robert Sparkman if you have, say, 30mm between the frets then your tuning for that fret will be out by maybe 1.5 cents, which most people won't ever notice. On a higher fret though the same error could be 3 cents out which might be noticeable. I'm not sure it matters if it's classical or electric. Personally I'd have thought it more important to get it right on a classical, but it depends who's playing it - most wouldn't notice.
Well done, might be easer to machine the slots all the same width with a thicker blade (perhaps on a table saw with a miter fence and a stop block) and then adjust one pin to fit all the slots instead of having to file 22 slots the same width.
I always thought that nut compensation was a function of how thick the string is, determining how far you have to bend the string before it contacts the fret, which is also dependent on setup or nut slot depth, which would affect the lowest frets much more than the higher ones, due to the deflection angle. I still see that as a factor, bit now see that the string tension and core diameter and resistance to stretching is more fundamental to the change in pitch. Good thing, as it makes first fret string height less critical, pitch wise. Don't worry about getting too detailed. It would be great if you were single and lived in CA. I'd definitely want to go out with and get to know you.
A question because I am very bad at using manual cutting tools: Instead of painstakingly cutting all of those slots, did you ever consider drilling holes (3 or 4mm diameter) on the order of 1cm from the edge, and then use a vertical locating pin?
Awesome!!!!!!!
thank you . sad i dont have access to a milling machine to do that with . would of been much easier how ever hand work is close too. loved the info
Funny you mention that, I am a machinist and it is my intent to use my Bridgeport to make a template, hence the reason for watching this video!
Thanks, how do you use the template?
A mosr important video. This is so overlooked by most buyers and retailers of strung instruments. But I struggle to understand why manufacturers are not using zero frets. It sorts out so many problems.
good work
I may have missed it but did you subtract half of the pin size to your distance fret to fret. Cause you are measuring out to out rather than center to center. So if you did not the fret spacing will be off by half a pin size.
+Dane Nichols I added a column in the spreadsheet to add on the slot width 3.17mm
Susan Gardener, I thought I must have missed something. I got interrupted several times in the course of the vids. Thanks Suz I now know I do not want to make one for myself.
I need the measurement chart of fret to make a new Guitar
Don't be afraid to get complicated as long as you are making sense which you absolutely are :)
Still got the wobbly bench then?