Fretless guitar

Fretless bass redirects here.

The fretless guitar is a guitar without frets (including similarly configured bass guitars known as fretless bass). It operates in the same manner as most other stringed instruments and traditional guitars, but does not have any frets to act as the lower end point (node) of the vibrating string. On a fretless guitar, the vibrating string length runs from the bridge (also called chair), where the strings are attached, all the way up to the point where the fingertip presses the string down on the fingerboard.

There are two often cited advantages of fretless guitar:

• Unique sound. The fingertip is relatively soft (when compared to solid and hard fret) and absorbs energy from vibrating string much faster, thus, effectively making a pizzicato (more damped) sound.

• Musical freedom. Performer has a relative freedom of positioning the hand and playing by ear, not constrained with particular musical tuning, as in case with fretted instrument. This can be viewed as a disadvantage, as playing fretless instrument usually requires much more training.

However, acoustic fretless guitars are very quiet and are barely used in practice. Two notable modifications are usually used instead:

• Bass guitars feature much heavier strings and bigger resonant body to amplify the sound, thus sound relatively loud even fretless.

• With an invention of electronical sound amplification, particularly electric guitars, sound can be amplified to the necessary extent.

Most of today's fretless guitars are modification of factory made traditionally "fretted" guitars. However, there are also professional builders specialising in fretless guitars.

Fretless bass guitars are much more common than fretless guitars in modern music and commerce, with many manufacturers offering these as standardly available models.

In alphabetic order:

• Adrian Belew (King Crimson) has occasionally used fretless guitars.
• Jack Bruce (Cream) uses a fretless Warwick bass guitar.
• Tim Donahue uses self-made fretless guitars.
• Rick Nielsen (guitarist for Cheap Trick) has a fretless six-string as the bottom neck on his famous five-necked Hamer guitar.
• Erkan Oğur makes nearly all his music with self-made fretless guitars.
• Jaco Pastorius (Weather Report) is considered a pioneer of the fretless bass.
• Sting used a fretless bass when he was with the Police.
• Andy Summers (The Police) also used a fretless Hamer guitar.

• International Society for Creative Guitar and String Music
• Frets on bass guitar