Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

No Bill, we did not lose any posts here.

Well, I'll be, er, dashed...

Wow. What's the old expression: "The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree"? Or something like that.

I always thought that the slanted frets looked cool, and based on my fretting style I think that they would be great. I have never played one so I cannot confirm that, but I wish that they were optional.

I guess that I'm confusing slanted & fanned frets.

The slanted frets are all parallel to each other, but not perpendicular to the edge of the neck, whereas fanned frets change angle from each other and do fan out, with the 'perspective point' above the neck, in playing position.

More specifically, if you continued to draw the fanned frets as lines in space, they'd all converge at one and only one point. Lines representing the string contact points for the bridge and nut also have to go through that point to work. In this way the bass strings actually have a longer scale length than the treble strings, pretty cool when you think about it.

Slanted frets (including nut and bridge) would be all parallel lines and the scale length for all strings is the same.

Very interesting indeed, but then I was sick enough to get a math degree, so no surprise there.

A follow up question... would that singular point of convergence be directly below the 12th fret?

If so...

Let's think outside the box some more... how about slanted AND fanned? A singular point of convergence NOT directly below the 12th fret?

jdogric12aolcom wrote:Very interesting indeed, but then I was sick enough to get a math degree, so no surprise there.

A follow up question... would that singular point of convergence be directly below the 12th fret?

If so...

Let's think outside the box some more... how about slanted AND fanned? A singular point of convergence NOT directly below the 12th fret?

Hold on there Stephen Hawking!

blueflamerick wrote:

jdogric12aolcom wrote:Very interesting indeed, but then I was sick enough to get a math degree, so no surprise there.

A follow up question... would that singular point of convergence be directly below the 12th fret?

If so...

Let's think outside the box some more... how about slanted AND fanned? A singular point of convergence NOT directly below the 12th fret?

Hold on there Stephen Hawking!

Nah, if he were doing the frets, they would be warped by the curvature of space-time due to the close proximity of a black hole such that the point of convergence would be directly on top of the 12th fret. But, due to the non-causal aspects of quantum entanglement, the actual convergence would happen after the frets had actually been applied, such that they wouldn't appear any different unless you happened to be inside a singularity.

Or maybe they'd just warp like this:

Seems like that would be a ***** to make, but comfortable to play...

Oh, wait, I'm always forgetting that CNC thingy.

jps wrote:with the 'perspective point' above the neck, in playing position.

Oops! The perspective point is below the neck!

I had the opportunity to play Gary Clauson's Walnut-finished, slanted fret 481 a few weeks back; fretting chords is easy on the lower frets, but as one goes further up the neck, chords become increasingly difficult to fret.

Thanks again for letting me try out your guitar Gary; it was a rare treat!

Because of this, the hotttt pups and the lack of radius on the board, I've always viewed the 481 as primarily a lead player's guitar.

But this may change once I learn to play properly...

Were any 481's made without slanted frets? The only ones I've seen had slanted frets.

As for my 480, it's not completely flat, but seems darn close. It throws some of my guitar buddies off when they first play it, but I love it.