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Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 3:01 pm
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Ceri wrote:
The one bit of it all I still don't understand is the high action. Like Dan says, seems to run counter to the idea of lightness of touch. Waiting to hear what someone who actually uses that guitar has to say about that...

Cheers - C


I guess the Srat God can answer you well. He uses this guitar for a long time and he has another scalloped baby :)

I am guite new with this guitar and have lots of things to learn about it.

Thanks


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Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 3:51 pm
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Ceri wrote:

The only time I tried out an Yngwie it felt like fretting onto springs without the timber underneath,

Cheers - C


certainly explains the speed aspect. The problem with fretting is never down to hammering on if you watch a 6 month player its always pull offs.
This leads me to believe theres something in the muscle memory idea, you use hammer on muscles more than you use pulloff muscles and that any springyness in the feel of fretting the guitar is going to result in a easier pulloff.

On finger pressure im a heavy player in my opinion, but i only listen to light touch players. :?

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Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 4:05 pm
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Yngwie.jr wrote:
But your fingers touch to the fretboard and it causes a friction on bends. It is more easy to do the bends with the scalloped fretboard.

I said the same before aslo I didn't see any difference except bends and also mentioned that it is harder for me to do hammer ons and pull offs.


Yes, I would imagine that not feeling the fretboard under your fingertips take some getting used to. The feel is very different, that's for sure.

Bends are easier on a scalloped board because you don't have the fingertip friction? Hmmm, okay, I suppose once you get used to your fingers not touching the board.

How is it going back and forth between scalloped and standard boards? Or are you exclusively scalloped?

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Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 4:55 pm
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orvilleowner wrote:
I have seen some old, well worn fingerboards ... and if you notice the big dips aren't under the strings, they are where the fingertips and fingernails hit the wood of the fingerboard (between the strings).

I still challenge you to check: your fingertips & nails may touch the board, but the string doesn't! You should notice that it is very hard to actually press the string itself to the wood. Try it using a pick to push down the string. Listen to how sharp the note is when you do this. There's no way you do that while actually playing.

I won't laugh ...


C'mon: you're laughing your head off. Not least in that you've had me trying out different guitars, pressing the strings in different places and with different playing while trying to examine the underneath of the string with my eyeball about a quarter of an inch away from the edge of the neck. Surely there's better ways for a grown man to spend his evening?

I'll meet you half way. Much of the damage on that old neck of mine is indeed between the strings and does come from the fingernails. In all this time I've never really paid attention to just how much my short nails are contacting the fingerboard; so I've learnt something.

However, some of the damage on that wood is also from strings and leads right into the deep wear grooves in the frets. That neck is now guitarless, but on others I really can get the string to contact the wood (lower down the neck) merely with my finger though, yes, it takes quite a hefty press to do it and certainly carries the pitch way off.

After much examination I think the story of that old neck is that it was from one of my beginner guitars, and as the frets wore down I was just too ashamed to take such a cheapy instrument to be refretted (once I discovered that such a thing as refretting existed...). So I went on playing it till the frets were nearly worn away, taking the string closer to the timber. It's getting close to being a fretless neck, in the lower regions! For sure that lead to poor intonation: I trust my pitch and touch have improved a little over the succeeding decades!

None of my later guitars show nearly such drastic fingerboard wear, so I guess even my fretting has lightened somewhat.

I'm going to call it a score draw; you can laugh if you want to. :wink:

Anyway. The cursed thing about all this is I'm now really itching to try another scalloped neck - which is tricky because I can't remember the last time I saw one in a guitar shop...

Caniniz sag olsun - C


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Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 6:27 pm
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Ceri -
Well thought-out questions you ask. Let's go way back in history and look at stringed instruments:

The guitar is a few hundred years old and the lute has been played about twice as long. Before metal frets were developed all of these instruments incorporated a scalloped fingerboard - with the 'point' of wood as the fret. This was the norm for centuries. Obviously, the wood wore out quickly, but while it held it's shape it functioned properly.

Even though most guitarists do not know much about scalloped fingerboards they have been in use far longer than today's flat fretted boards and have been a success far longer than guitars have existed.

At first they will feel wrong and odd, but soon you'll see the merits and huge value of a design that is centuries old. Believe me~ if it sucked nobody would still make them. Once you get comfortable with a scalloped neck, I can almost guarantee you'll never go back to a coventional neck again - really. My main reason is this:

Imagine the control you have when you fret a note and your finger only touches the string as it hovers over the wood like a tight-rope act. Every nuance~ every micro-tonal change from pressure jumps out of your amp. Your level of control is unsurpassed. After you learn how to harness this technique you can play lines and phrases with a style, speed and structure level much higher than you currently play. That means more of "YOU" comes through in your playing.

To me, that's what it's all about - 8)


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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:17 am
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Hi Strat God (ladies and gentlemen, we have a direct line to God - and he wants to talk guitars! Heaven indeed):

Thanks for your interesting comments. I’d love to pick your brain some more, if you are up for it. I’m attentive to what you say about your guitars’ handling. One thing that probably puts lots of people off scalloped necks is they are so closely identified with Yngwie’s music: if that’s not our thing then we possibly assume the instrument is not for us. Certainly, my only turn on a scalloped neck felt and sounded pretty weird, but then I thought, oh well, I don’t want to play that sort of stuff anyway, so I’ll pursue this neck no further.

So it is useful to hear about wider applications. One thing that caught my eye in Dan Erlewine’s pages was that he says, “bending blues notes has never been easier”, etc. I’m wondering what sort of music you play?

Also, would not a very low action go hand in hand with what you and others are saying this neck is all about? Like Dan, I just don’t understand what Yngwie says about his high action. One moment that neck is all for lightness of touch, the next the strings are set high so needing proportionately more pressure to fret them. Er - what?

Also, why do a few players, such as Vai I believe, have the scalloping just at the top of the neck? Whatever my debate with Orvilleowner, not even I get my fingertip touching wood up there even on a conventional neck, so what purpose does scalloping serve at the dusty end?

Since that neck is clearly important to you, I wonder if you know anything about how it is made. Your really excellent photos on the other thread show just how well the job has been done on your Fender neck: I’m trying to imagine how that was achieved. Certainly not with a conventional router - at least, not without 21 very specialised cutting bits… Maybe it is just a CNC program these days - though that is quite expensive to set up; I wonder if they sell enough of those guitars to justify it. Someone will suggest hand filing, but your fingerboard looked amazingly accurate, and somehow it just doesn’t look hand made. I’m trying to imagine a jig for producing that fingerboard, and not getting very far.

Reason I’m asking is I once saw a neck someone had scalloped himself by hand; he’d made a decent job of it, but it didn’t have quite the precision I see on yours. Any info?

Last thing. I am in no way expert on medieval and Renaissance lutes. But I did go through a phase of enthusiasm for that music and saw quite a few of them being played. I can’t remember ever seeing such an instrument with a scalloped neck. Most period lutes I’ve seen have frets made from gut which encircles the neck tightly and can be moved up and down the fingerboard to alter the temperament. (Eat your heart out, Buzz Feiten…)

I don’t in the slightest doubt what you say, but I’d be most grateful if you can point me in the direction of information about scalloped fingerboards on ancient instruments.

Incidentally, I could never afford to buy a lute and so never even got started on playing them. But I did purchase a cheap oud in Turkey once with the idea of getting into those sounds by a sideways route. Don’t try it, kids! Though they have a common ancestry those are very different instruments. Visually attractive, but murder to try and play western sounding music on…

Cheers - C


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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:37 am
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Strat God wrote:
My main reason is this:

Imagine the control you have when you fret a note and your finger only touches the string as it hovers over the wood like a tight-rope act. Every nuance~ every micro-tonal change from pressure jumps out of your amp. Your level of control is unsurpassed. After you learn how to harness this technique you can play lines and phrases with a style, speed and structure level much higher than you currently play. That means more of "YOU" comes through in your playing.

To me, that's what it's all about - 8)


I like the lyrical way to explain the situation that you have done 8) It can be seen from 1000 miles away that you have an artistic soul.

I am wondering how you can express yourself with playing guitar, if you can do these with the words 8)


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Post subject: Abomb, Question...
Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:36 am
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I see the photo you have of the 70's Strats... Is that what you play? What are your impressions of that model... I deffinitely considered it? Can you compare and contrast it with American Standard Strat?


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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:51 pm
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Ceri wrote:
Also, why do a few players, such as Vai I believe, have the scalloping just at the top of the neck? Whatever my debate with Orvilleowner, not even I get my fingertip touching wood up there even on a conventional neck, so what purpose does scalloping serve at the dusty end?


It does seem weird to have scalloping just on the highest frets (for the reason you gave).

And I will agree that if one's frets are just a sliver of metal, then there's a good chance the string can be pushed to the wood! But, of course, I was thinking of frets at "like new" heights because I can't stand low frets! And because I can't stand low frets, I bet I could easily become a scalloped fretboard lover ..... if I ever spent any quality time with one.

Cheers!

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Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 6:26 am
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orvilleowner wrote:
And I will agree that if one's frets are just a sliver of metal, then there's a good chance the string can be pushed to the wood! But, of course, I was thinking of frets at "like new" heights because I can't stand low frets! And because I can't stand low frets, I bet I could easily become a scalloped fretboard lover ..... if I ever spent any quality time with one.


You are right - as always. (I nearly wrote "as usual", but that doesn't really cover it.)

That last leads to yet another unexplained aspect to the whole thing. Dan Erlewine ends his quite full discussion of these fretboards by noting that some people believe that they will get the same benefits simply from huge high frets. But he says; "This is simply not true." OK... but why not, Dan? He doesn't illuminate.

Anyway. I'm off to tinpan alley tomorrow and I'll be keeping a weather eye out for a scalloped neck to try again, but I doubt I'll get lucky. Can't remember the last time I saw one...

Cheers - C


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Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 9:46 am
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Man I'm sorry to hear that.
You get all excited when you buy a new guitar, and then something crappy happens w/ it.
Hopefully this will be fixed soon.


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Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 5:53 pm
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Ceri wrote:
Dan Erlewine ends his quite full discussion of these fretboards by noting that some people believe that they will get the same benefits simply from huge high frets. But he says; "This is simply not true." OK... but why not, Dan? He doesn't illuminate.


Well, one reason is that "they" don't make frets tall enough! The currently available frets won't get you there (part of the way there, but not all the way).

So if you could get frets that were 1/8 inch taller than the tallest currently available, then I believe the feel would be the same as that of a scalloped fretboard. Imagine how tall the nut would have to be too!

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