Can anyone explain why Dan Ross' Guitar (in the video above) looks skewed (the first frett) at the top of the neck? Never seen that before on guitar.
I thought it was my eyes,,i wanna know more..
I got to see this guitar up close and personal at the Canadian Guitar Festival, but I did not touch it. Marc Beneteau makes these, and a couple of the Candyrat artists use them. Craig D'Andrea comes to mind. Marc Beneteau apprenticed under Jean Larrivee, and makes some really great sounding instruments. Don Ross uses his guitars nearly exclusively. By fan-fretting, the overall tension on this guitar is reduced while still achieving the baritone bass notes, as opposed to a standard-fretted baritone guitar that would have a 28" scale length on all six strings.."It's a fan-fret baritone made by Marc Beneteau. The scale length is variable from 28" on the low E string to 26" on the high e string. This keeps the tensions lower on the smaller strings."
Thanks for that interesting piece of information Dan. Ever played one yourself?
Chris
Both.strange or special
The idea behind this guitar is to have a baritone guitar with a 28" scale length on the 6th string, but only 26" on the 1st string. Beneteau achieved this by orienting the nut and the bridge on angles such that they form a "V". The frets are arranged on angles such that they would converge at the vertex of the "V". The 1st string crosses the "V" where its rays are 26" apart, and the 6th string crosses the "V" where its rays are 28" apart. Because the scale length is less than 28" on the 1st through 5th strings, the tension required to tune them to standard baritone pitch is lower than it would be on a standard baritone guitar where all six strings have a 28" scale length. Willem, the most incredible thing to me about this guitar was watching Don Ross switch back and forth between fan-fret and standard guitars, then easily play complex pieces without errors or difficulty.Dan,,can't really see much,,how does it work,, is the neck a sort of twisted (fan)?? i can see they have worked on mensure lengt's..oeps we stole the thread..