Tutorial - How to Mark Out the Fanned Fret Positions on a Multi-scale Fretboard - Podcast 34 

Dude, I was having trouble drawing out a multiscale. Just reminded me to start with the perp fret and I think it's solved my brain fog. Your videos are great. Thanks!

After watching you use yours, I went out and bought one of those awesome Incra Rules protractors. It's an amazing little thing.

The free fretfind2d program does fanned fret positions for you. It will even create a PDF for you to print out. The one problem comes with printing it out as adobe reader defaults to fit to page which even though you were printing A4 on A4 still shrinks it. You have to change the print option in adobe reader to actual size. Accuracy of your printer and paper's ability to stretch are the other problems.

Thanks for posting. This will help when installing frets on the renaissance bandora I'm building. But it's in meantone temperament!

Thank you for the lesson! I am Grateful for your service to teach!

Very nicely done ! The first time I saw a fanned fret board was here on your channel and I thought that either there was a problem with the camera or it was an optical illusion ! I'm going to have to find a guitar with a fan fret board to see how it feels (out of curiosity of course). There is not a chance that I would attempt to create my own guitar with FFB with the tools and facilities available to me but it's very relaxing to see you doing it, thanks for sharing your techniques Ben !

Great video mate! This is super helpful. Keep up the great work 🤘

WHERE IS THAT FANNED FRET MARKING GAUGE YOU SAID YOU WOULD HAVE FOR SALE?

thank you. Ben you are great

Awww don't you look such a young chap and such starch in your voice 😁 as per usual a great informative video, I was thinking of a jig based on the twelfth fret line fanning out to the nut and bridge using the centreline as a marked scale, (pause for breath) but I think that will probably have too much mechanical tolerance stack up, so I shall use your method, many thanks 👍

Who is the diffrent, for the wide from the neck? By an shortscale bass, with the wide, 31 inch, is the first fret on the 7th fret, or on an other fret?

that fretboard blank is beautiful, what kind of wood is that?

Screwing that up and finding out only when you adjust intonation would be a glorious oh-shit-moment :-) One day I will try that though.

Ben your friggen incredible!

I don't understand the displacment of the fret when using a fret calculator can someone explain plz

I just mark the 12 fret and use a scale for the 1st string and a larger scale for the 6/7 or 8th string. Point of reference will be 12ve fret at all times. And thats it. Each string will have a different lenght, so adjust the intonation on each string with the 440 reference.

Excellent video. Okay, don't laugh, I build three and four string "cigar box" style guitars and fretting has been a steep learning curve for a guy who once had his high school geometry teacher convinced he was a dunce. Over the course of time I learned and started using the 12th root of 2 to layout and set fret positions when I went from slide necks to fretted necks so that I could use any scale length I needed to match the harmonics of the resonator I would be building around. But the one thing that always bothered me was the extreme discomfort of perpendicular frets (okay in addition to being a math dunce, I am also not a guitarist so I "play" just enough to set and adjust intonation, run the standard blues scales and - - - when no one is watching - - - chug out a terrible rendition of "I Am A Man") to double check the set ups and listen for any fret buzz or setup issues. But even on the narrow gauge necks perpendicular frets are just awful so I stumbled across fanned frets by accident when I watched a guy playing an eight string guitar and the only perpendicular fret was the 12th and my eye instantly told me the neck was far more ergonomic than a standard neck, and by gosh if he hadn't found someway to tune that beast. I had it in my mind the solution was to set the midline and then use tangents based on a fixed point set off the 12th fret and let the frets "set" naturally or to set the nut and bridge angles off that tangent and calculate the fret positions for each string, so this video solves a math problem I was going to have to spend hours solving. HOWEVER, in your opinion what is the best or most comfortable scale length difference between low E and high E? For instance I stay with longer scales to adjust the voicing of my small resonators down an octave which cause the ergonomics issue, if I scale down say dulcimer or lower scale lengths the perpendicular frets are not near so intolerable but once you are at 25" and greater scale lengths the wrist strain in the low register is awkward and uncomfortable but the voicing better for most blues and blues/rock rhythm lines.

What App are you using?

Great job, but how do you know the string spacing at the 12 fret ? My initial thought was you would use the full scale length and measure from the bridge (or bridges, since many fanned fret guitars have single string bridges), depending on the space between each saddle. Since your 12th fret is right in the middle and perpendicular, I suppose it’s not too hard to find out, but if you choose another fret for the perpendicular one, I guess it might be slightly harder, isn’t it ?

Ok, so indeed do this the way Ben has demonstrated. I rather arrogantly thought, "Hey, I'll cut the nut angle first and glue the fret board on, before I do anything else." The angle was correct (triple checked), but the board shifted slightly off of the body end center line on the neck blank when I clamped it for gluing. I didn't realize this immediately, and the treble side scale length kept refusing to properly line up at fret 12 as it should have. Treble side scale length ended up increasing by nearly 3mm. Avoid stupid mistakes. Lay out before gluing.

hey man in the minute 9:19, how do you determine the string spacing in the twelve fret??? you use the ruler??? would be awesome if you can explaine me, great videos keep on going.

Hi Ben, can you make me a custom fanned fret telecaster neck?

1:41 for me it turns out the fanned frets actually are problematic for my wrist at the lowest frets. imagine doing a barre chord at the 1st fret. with fanned frets ret it's much more uncomfortable because you have to twist your wrist so much more (although *most* of my discomfort might stem from it being an 8 string). it's definitely more ergonomic at higher frets but i didnt actually consider it might be less comfortable at lower frets

Did you radius the fretboard before all of this?

hmmmm I actually 0 the 9th... for barritone 7 (25.5-27.67)... and actually used a 6" digital caliper (LOL)... used a complex matrix to verify fret-to-fret positions ...worked, but ended up just getting a 24" caliper :D (one digital and one vernier)

Sir, may you teach me to make guiter

I don't understand how it all goes angled from the beginning but still meets at the 12th. Do these intonate proper to begin with?

I’m pretty sure that Strandberg start with a perpendicular nut and zero fret and everything else fans from there. Is that correct? Seems like an easy way to do it.

Hello, question the rule to use is in centimeters or inches? thanks

So, do you think the 12th fret should be the one perpendicular on the axe of the FB, or the first fret?...

What is the book you use?

what´s the book and the app name, some body knows?

Does this work on bass?

Is that wenge? Looks great!

I would have thought the 12 fret the reason why that is because it's further away if you started from the other end the distance couldn't throw it out if it's only a 15 thousands of a millimetre out at the bottom it will be a lot more at the top for the reasons you stated comfortability accuracy. You should use the hardest pencil something like a 3h or Carpenters pencil sharpened as a chisel. But really the marks would be better put in with the scalpel first. Using a protractor is not very accurate an engineering Square would be better

Fuck me. Maybe I'm dumb but this is the first tutorial where I'm completely lost. I think I'm missing some basic terminology. How do you decide your different scale lengths? - because it's that that gives you the nut angle, correct? Is it possible to do it the other way around and have an angled saddle but a square nut?

Invest in a contrasting pencil.

thank u very well but 6 ADS in this video

I know this whole operation is about doing it the traditional way, but I would just like to point out that this would be so much easier on a CNC machine like the X-Carve.

Ben please "USE A WHITE PENCIL " so we can see it as well.

ok that's enough ' far too skillful ... NICE!

From 9:40 on, if you base your measurements on the outer strings, unless I am completely wrong-thinking this, all the measurements will be too close together because your ruler is at an angle to the centerline of the fretboard. You need to measure 36.48mm on the centerline and then strike a line perpendicular to that out to the bass-string line. The point where this perpendicular crosses the string line constitutes one reference point for striking your fret angle.

fretfind2d is a grat aplication for that purpose...you may know it...

woo hoo! first view!

Is this patented by Novak or are you free sell these guitars without any problems?

Weird... Your explanation seems overly complicated and limited.... From my point of view it's just some simple geometry. I understand that not everybody is into maths but I think that apart from this tutorial people should at least try thinking about it in terms of geometry and maths. What do You think?

This guy just talks too much!