As a former guitar center employee, it was probably packaged by someone making $9/hr who, despite learning the CORRECT way to package stuff from the website's "training modules", got yelled at for taking too long by attempting to do it *right*, was forced to half-ass the job, and then got yelled at for doing _that_. I mean just. Hypothetically
I was noticing that, and it's probably the only real reason to play anything fretless (aside from impressing people that can't play it.) What a pain in the ass, but notes & transitions really are silky smooth! No buzz/snarl/"fret clank" at all.
I had to learn bass on an electric fretless. Got thrown into band duty the following week after receiving it. It was a tough learning curve, and nobody else would touch it with a bargepole. Over time, I fell in love with the sound and the things you could play that would have been impossible on a fretted bass. It really improves finger accuracy. Another BIG plus is the microtone capability...
Agreed. I don't think he liked how the lack of frets was making him reflect on his already-developed skill set as a guitar player. But how should I know?? I'm mainly a singer.
@@agent2face512 As a violin player, there's definitely a big difference. When playing a violin, your hand stays in the same spot on the strings most of the time, and when you do move it, it's not very far - basically the length of three to six fingertips. A guitar neck is over 25 inches long, and requires you to move your hand around it constantly. Getting lost without a visual indicator would be extremely easy, and you have to be very precise to avoid making a note sound slightly off. That's what the fret markers are for - showing you at a glance precisely where to put your hands when you need to make a long-distance jump. Also, almost everyone who learns violin starts with markers too ;)
But are there versions of those instruments that are commonly used with frets? No, the answer is no. So for an instrument that is commonly used WITH frets to go to a version without frets or fret markers, is extremely odd and defeats the purpose of the instrument.
I've seen guitarists who can play fretless guitars & guitarists who can play violin. It's all just muscle memory that can be learned with enough time 🤷♂️
Something really cool about fretless is that it opens up other bodies of theory to play with. Quarter tone eastern stuff, for example, could be pretty fun to learn on that.
I will play any instrument I can get my hands on, mainly I play guitar though. I try to find the octave and the fifth on each next string, it's easier from there.
Really? because I don’t think I have ever seen anyone in an orchestra bang out a 4 minute solo included with finger picking and dive bars those chumps couldn’t even touch the greats
As someone who used to work in retail shipping, that was a shit packing job. When we shipped guitars, we used at least four layers of bubble wrap plus loose fill or air cushions to stabilize it.
I like your videos a lot. Funny but also great stuff to take away ! As someone from a middle class upbringing, and having fantasised owning a guitar for over a decade (before I could finally afford one), I hate to see any guitar die that way. Just breaks my heart :((
Just wondering, are you American? I see Americans online saying "middle class" to basically mean anything from "poor" to "not a billionaire" sometimes, which is kinda strange to me, so I was just wondering if you are. It seems like a lot of Americans feel that there is some sort of shame attached to saying that they come from a working class background, and so just say middle class instead or something, I don't really understand it btw I agree with you, I thought it was pointless and disrespectful to destroy the guitar like that too
9:16 unecessary and disrespectful. I'm trying to buy my dream guitar (PRS SE Paul Allender) since 2007 living here in Brazil and still couldnt buy it. Is very sad to see a good and new guitar being destroyed for no purppouse at all.
thinking back to before my first guitar, I woulda killed to have anything. I don't feel you gave it a fair shot or see why you'd destroy your only fretless guitar either way, the neck coulda been fixed, but the body was totally fine.
no cap, I really liked how it sounded before you marked the frets, it sounded very bluesy, and hearing those kind of micro-tones from a guitar is really nice.
Someone should make a guitar with a uniform symmetrical body that can be played comfortably both right and left handed, call it an Ambitar, or anything to do with ambidextrousity. We could then petition for Ambitar to be the new universal standard! Man I wish there was some stupid level music company like As Seen On TV that would buy anyone's dumb ideas, I'd be rich lol
Right?! Really let down that they wouldnt innately develop their ear and finger placements after years of playing Even as a meh cellist around year 3 I could find any note without looking, Good guitarist and bassist tell me they have ear training
Taylore Red A cello, violin, viola, etc are different from a guitar different sizes, different way of holding and playing. And the vibration speeds are different never compare a guitar to an orchestra
Our bass player had a fret less Peavy and I always loved how clean it sounded. No string buzz whatsoever, but still sounded great when slapping or plucking. Of course his had markers on the side of the neck so it was easier to navigate.
I like the sound of the instrument. What may be useful is to become comfortable playing the natural minor starting on the 2nd fret up and down each string. After you play a fingered note there is a harmonic on each note. That can go a long way in helping you orient yourself on the fingerboard.
in oud also (the arabic lute) which is basically a fretless guitar with a pear chaped raisonnance chamber hahahah. And they play perfectly, even the semi tones
Looks like you just bought a really big viola! Some good wood glue like furniture makers use (I do that) would hold that cracked neck just fine. I would recommend Titebond III. The reason it cracked is that the maker didnt pay attention to the grain direction in the neck, so it split along the grain.
That was actually a beautiful instrument and I am fascinated by the whole idea. Poor baby was so abused. T_T She didn't deserve the botched repair/custom job or the outright murder that came afterward.
I play fretless bass guitar. From my experience fret markers only take you so far. I learned to play it by ear. The markers aren't 100% reliable because there are other factors involved such as intonation, string gauge, tross rod tension, etc that affects the pitch of the note on a micro tune level. You are honestly better off just learning to play the thing without looking at the fretboard, that way you can learn to react and correct pitch by ear regardless of the state of the these factors. This of course up to a certain point. If you are widely out of tune that will still throw you off a bit, but fretlessness does give you the possibility to correct in real time way more than a fretted instrument ever could.
I'm a Fretless player . I can confirm everything you wrote. At one point you simply "know what you are doing" , but it took me nearly ten years of hard practice and a lot of tears. But in the beginning you just need something keeps you on track. A full blind instrument for a beginner is impossible. Myself too I started painting the fret ten years ago. It took me at least 4 years before I started to follow ears and my hand . But yeah, the control you get after the years of practice is something a fretted player can never truly understand.
@@williamleardini8876 String instruments beginners start almost always with markers (any tape). They last usually for a couple months. The difference is that you also need some exercises to put your hand and your ear in order, while in guitar/bass and etc you don't. There's plenty of ways to understand if you are playing on tune or not, before you train ur ear, for most instruments. I don't play guitar but by logic, I'd say that if u take too long or can't learn how to play a fretless instrument, it's because you are not following a method for that, if u just ignore the marks but keep doing the "normal" exercises, u will just be making everyhing way harder, it's just not worth it. I'd recommend to watch some shifting position exercises for violin just to understand the logic and then just apply to a guitar,bass and etc.
@Zack Hall No. Many guitars have truss rods. Their purpose is to counteract the tension of the strings. You can actually adjust them to get different curvature on the neck of the guitar.
As a gamer, my comparison for a fretless guitar with no fret markers to video games is like playing a shooter game with no crosshair. No way of knowing if you’ll hit what you think you’ll hit until you shoot
Nathan Weiss honestly the out of tune pentatonics sound really cool. Microtonal music becomes more and more interesting to me every time i listen to it. You should hear some of sevish’s stuff on youtube
@@user-dj6lj1dl1c I tend to like it more in theory, as in discussion videos on it, than in the actually listening to it. But mostly I was just trying to annoy or confuse people with perfect pitch. :)
@@johnp.smithasimpleman7281 If we are going to spend the rest of our lives on the Internet and not talking to each other in real life. Might as well actually try and make sense to one another by using correct grammar.
Great video. Why didn't you just glue the crack before clamping it and fix the guitar before playing it? That said, LOVED your riff, and think the fretless sound is WORTH exploring! I hadn't expected that!
I wanted to e-mail him to see if he would be willing to sell that guitar; i have the exact same model, a Ibanez EX Series 350 in laser blue color, it's just the best guitar i've played and i've been longing for another one, they're just too difficult to find. All that fretwork was done by someone who didn't seem to care too much about the guitar, you can see how bent the guitar neck is, i wouldn't mind repairing it, it'd been such a delight to add some frets and bring it back to life... until i saw the end of the video, it felt like a hit in the nuts.
It's always sad to see someone treat instruments with that kind of disrespect. I'm totally pissed by that *** right now. Also, I want a fretless guitar!
@Antony Blazhev So theres literally millions of guitars out there. Who cares, he bought it, literally every rockstar ever has destroyed a guitar at some point on stage. Good for him. It was prolly frustrating making this video and felt good to break that piece of crap
You bought it blindly, you didn't pay a proper shipping, you didn't repair it as it should and because you don't know how to make it sound good you broke it...
Strings snapping...in 1963 or 64 I was tuning a guitar for the first time in my life when the skinny E string snapped: I couldn't find the end of it and I was getting confused so finally I set the guitar down on the couch to figure it out when I felt something on my cheek. I thought it was a bug or a fly and tried to brush it away. I grabbed the string at the bridge, ran my hand along it and discovered that the end of the broken string had stuck straight into my face barely below my eye. That was scary. I've been real cautious ever since. Watching you turn your head away is what reminded me of that incident because that's how I tune my guitars every time.
@@kenheisner288 Face shield. But with my luck it'll stick in my carotid artery and give me a fatal infection....full suit of armor maybe...robots in another room...
Had the end go right into the very middle of my pinky fingernail top. I shook my hand because it hurt but I didn't realize what had happened at first until I looked at it and pulled it out. Blood started to come out of the tiny hole in my fingernail. LOL.
@@mgmt1215 I just used basic wood glue, I wedged open the crack more by bending back the neck, squirted glue on both sides, removed the wedge, clamped it shut hard, wiped off any excess from the crack and left it for 6 hours. Shaved off any dried excess glue with a razor, Sanded with 2000 grit, and polished some candle wax into it
Fretless guitars obviously aren't great for speed shredding, but I have to say, that riff at 8:19 sounds so fat and expressive, especially with the delay, I love it! The only way to really do this properly IMO is to build your own fretboard.
Man. An electric guitar is worth more than 1 year of full time job's work in my country and this man just destroys it that easily. My heart has been broken
@@brainrot___ I could have guessed it... I am from Turkey and the situation isnt any different here. So I understand you, I hope you get rid of the islamic regime and build up the democratic Iran again. I respect your country and history a lot. Best regards from your neighbour
Any beginning luthier can easily de-fret a guitar for you: just pull the frets and fill the grooves with a slightly different shade of filler so you have perfect markings exactly where the frets were.
I did that to get into playing fretless bass almost a year ago, except I didn't fill in the frets, I got the cheapest used p bass at guitar center for $50, though I plan on upgrading to a warwick before too much longer now that I know I enjoy it
@@cursedcliff7562 haven't had a problem yet, and even if I do, the thing only cost me $50 and is a Wal-Mart quality instrument, already looking at getting a decent warwick to replace it
I remember looking into it and true fretless guitars apparently have to have slightly differently shaped not-fret boards or something like that to play better
1. Gently spread the crack apart 2-3mm 2. Apply wood glue to the inside of the crack 3. Wrap with several layers of paper towel 4. Secure with as many hose clamps as you can fit on the cracked area.
Right? That was a nice long break along the grain of the neck. My favourite because of how easy to fix. I would've probably pulled the break apart a little more to sand a bit of the break cleaner and give a little more surface area for the wood glue.
Maybe it's a culture thing, I don't know, but seeing someone destroy an overall good instrument like that one for "entertainment" is just CRINGY as fuck
Geez! He literally destroyed it at the end! I would have at least kept it and framed it because, it actually look pretty cool. And it’s also rare to have a fret less guitar
You mean replacing the one part that makes this cheap, generic guitar special and is also quite rare and expensive to find? Yeah, I can understand that he didn't want to do that after the frustration of it arriving broken. Especially since he never planned on playing fretless after the video anyway...
The reason the bridge was “locked back” is because on a floating bridge the only thing that holds it up (stops it from sinking back like that) is the tightness of the strings when it’s tuned, the strings were so floppy loose that’s why, also that’s the reason it sounded so cranky in right before the halfway mark, because you were tuning it without picking up the bridge, how to do it? Put a wammy bar in and lift the bridge up, put something underneath the bridge that is the perfect size to where it’s flush where you want it when you let go of the wammy bar, then you can tune the strings (but not too tight, it will pull the bridge up too high) and then push on the wammy bar to remove the thing underneath it, typically you’d lock the nuts up to before removing the item, I’m genuinely surprised he didn’t know this as seasoned as he is Edit: you said the strings were getting yanked into the neck, yes because you tried to tune it without picking the bridge up first and also didn’t tighten the strings enough, so the force of the springs pulling the bridge down is greater than the force of the strings pulling it up, because it’s not right enough, not tuned high enough, thus the strings are being pulled back and too low with the sinking of the bridge Edit 2: you show a clip of the bridge being pulled too high lmfao, that’s what I mentioned before, you are a legendary level guitar player, I’m almost baffled on your experiences with a floating bridge 😂 there’s hundreds of RU-vid tutorials on it man!!!!
That’s exactly the fret marking process currently. The higher frets denote harmonics above lower fretted notes. I think you mean harmonics of open strings...?
Always hate to see people trashing instruments. Even if you don’t know anyone that can’t afford a guitar, to give your old guitar to. Stop by any good local music shop and tell em give this guitar to the next kid that walks in looking at guitars. Or someone on the street holding a cardboard sign.
This was like one of those vidoes where someone takes in a homeless, mangey, one-eyed puppy and then lovingly helps it to make a full recovery. Except on this one they took it outside and stamped it to death.
Yup, he had to repair it first, just some white glue in the scarf joint and it was done. Not difficult to mark fingerboard edge properly as well... Stupid guy, anybody would have repaired it, so what, just for the show on a video ? Disgusting.
@@strat0871 it's a floyd rose fretless guitar, that's a pain in the ass and not something any good guitarist wants to play. sure, he could have given it away or something if he didnt want it, but he's basically just giving away a headache and a bad guitar. what was he meant to do?
He has money to waste, at 7:25 you can see the basses he bought but definitely doesn’t play. One of which I know is about 1000 dollars and he only got so someone else could play it on his album
Bought a Jackson Soloist off Reverb two years ago - it was wrapped in a few towels and thrown in an oversized box, and predictably fucked up. Not exactly what you want to see with a $700 purchase. And some of the vendor shipping on electronics, pedals, etc. is even worse. The QC / QA on that site is shit.
Destroying it? Really? You would've been better off sending it to a good repair guy and then selling it, come on. That's a waste of craftsmanship, even if the previous owner did a shit job taking care of it
This the guitar of my dreams….. Where I do a 10 second metal riff then just go full lumber jack and smash into the ground with a epic smile on my face💪🏻🎸🤟🏻
Just had to comment on this cuz 10 seconds later he made my dream come true and I honestly didn’t think it would happen but he definitely understood the assignment just got a like for sure👍🏻
@@jamesphillips104 Dude, not everything about a persons behavior is cool, just because you like his playing. Jimi also killed himself. Also super cool?
