Multiscale/Fanned fret questions

[silent_k]

Hi all,

I'm very new to the site (just joined last night) so forgive me if this has all been answered before, BUT: I'm planning a multiscale 8-string build and need some advice. I've built a few 6-string guitars and one bass, and I'm pretty sure I have all the tools I need. I mapped out a fretboard using FretFind with a 27-25 scale, and I made a little guide for my fret saw that I can clamp to the fretboard blank (just a jointed piece of oak with some rare earth magnets glued in flush to the surface -- saw that trick on another forum). But I've seen comments here and there about radius, specifically that frets need to be "twisted" in order to seat properly in a multiscale fretboard. Can anyone elaborate on this? Also, do you radius the board the same way you would a regular scale board (i.e. along the center line)?

I'm also wondering about the bridges. It looks like ABM single string bridges are about the only option, which is fine, but since they're all separate, how do you ground them? I was thinking of running a bare wire underneath with an access hole to the electronics cavity under the e string bridge unit, but I imagine there are better ways to do it.

This is going to be a slow build (I work slowly and have several other projects going) but I'll post pix of anything interesting as I work, and I'll surely have more questions. Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[silent_k]

Anyone? Bueller?

Perhaps some photos will help:

Here are the neck and fingerboard blanks I'll be using. The fingerboard might be just a tad too narrow, so I have another, wider one coming to me made of the same wood (bolivian rosewood/pau ferro). The neck blank is padauk. My plan is to use alder for the body with a stripe of padauk down the middle, which is an offcut from making this neck blank. (These two pieces are sitting next to a fretless guitar neck that just got a Mirror Coat fingerboard treatment last night -- can't have too many projects going at once, right?)

Because the neck will be somewhat heavy, I'll probably use some variation on this body shape:

This is a fretless bass I made a couple of months back. I'm making a neck-through guitar with this shape currently (with a few modifications), so we'll see how it feels, but for the bass it's turned out to be a pretty comfortable shape.

 

[Winspear]

Nice
Regarding your questions - ABM and ETS are options for bridges yes. A wire all the way across is pretty common. I've seen a lot of fanned guitars using custom angled bridgeplates with hipshot style saddles, too. I think I'd prefer the ABM+wire.

Yes the radius is done on the centerline as usual. I don't know about the frets.

 

[XEN]

You should also consider Strandberg bridges.
Strandberg Guitarworks

 

[BlackMastodon]

As far as I know (most of my knowledge coming from this forum), if you do make a radius on the fretboard for a fanned fret, it will be difficult to properly fret it because they will have some twist to it, especially where the fan is most extreme (first few lowest frets and last few highest frets). It would probably be easier to do an infinite (flat) radius instead if you don't mind playing it.

 

[silent_k]

Thanks for the replies everyone. BlackMastodon: yea, that's my understanding, too -- perhaps someone who has made a fanned fingerboard with a radius can enlighten us both on the twisting issue. I'm also going to test on a scrap fingerboard, and maybe I'll radius part of it and leave the rest flat and see if it's obvious what has to be done. I've never played a flat radius before, but I'm working on another 6-string project where I thought I'd either try it totally flat or with a pretty flat radius (like 20").

Ethereal: thanks for the reminder about ETS -- I'd forgotten about them. Do you know who their US distributor is?

urklvt: Thanks for the link -- I didn't know about Strandberg. For an 8-string it's a pretty expensive proposition (looks like the bridges are about $65 a piece, not including taxes), but since there's a tuner built in that might make it a bit more feasible. I hadn't though of doing a headless design but maybe that's the way to go. His stuff is killer.