bent frets

Jon Catler sent me this this afternoon. He can be reached
at freenote@earthlink.net

> On a separate note, that guy from Australia called again. He's a real
> piece of work. His patent, #5760322, says in the first general provision
> that he owns the patent on all bent frets anywhere on the neck. He's
> trying to stop anyone, which includes me and you, from using bent frets.
> His design bends the g and d strings at the first and second frets to
> fix their 'out of tuness' by about 8 cents. He says he has a major
> guitar company ready to release it. I think it's fine to patent the
> specifics of his design, but trying to patent bent frets anywhere is
> outrageous and greedy.
> Does the tuning list still exist? We need to mobilize the tuning
> community - anyone with a bent fret instrument should come forward.
> Anyone without a bent fret instrument should make one. The evolution of
> microtonal music has already been oppressed by big business - they
> haven't seen a big potential market, so they offer only one tuning
> system. We can't let some maniac get away with telling the world we
> can't use bent frets. Also, we use them to facilitate bending and
> playability in JI, not to make a 12-Tone note a bit flatter. If this
> idiot goes unchallenged, microtonal guitars will be less playable.
> He says I am required by law to tell him of anyone else I know who is
> using bent frets. I said I knew that people were using them, but I
> didn't know any names. Didn't lutes use gut frets that could be bent?
> There must be some other ethnic instruments that use them. You should
> post to some lists about this issue - it's the first major issue that
> could unite the microtonal folks. - JC

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* 49/32 R a d i o "all microtonal, all the time"
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm

> On a separate note, that guy from Australia called again.
> He's a real piece of work. His patent, #5760322, says in the
> first general provision that he owns the patent on all bent
> frets anywhere on the neck. He's trying to stop anyone, which
> includes me and you, from using bent frets.

I refretted my 'rational guitar', which uses staggered frets
which are individual for each string, back around 1984. I've
emailed references to it and diagrams of it to many people
over the last few years.

And here at the Sonic Arts Gallery, Jonathan Glasier owns
a Rankin-system magnetic interchangeable-fretboard guitar,
one fretboard of which is in a JI system which also uses
'bent frets'. I believe this predates my own guitar.

And of course, the frets on the Vogt guitar, one of which
is used by Wim Hoogewerf, can be placed anywhere on the neck,
including these 'bent fret' positions.

Maybe this guy should talk to Yamaha about their 'success' in
patenting the 19-tone keyboard.

-monz

Joseph L. Monzo San Diego monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
| 'I had broken thru the lattice barrier...' |
| -Erv Wilson |
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If, by "bent frets" he means frets that aren't linear and
perpendicuar to the neck, then he's duplicated the invention
of the pandora by John Rose (1562). Maybe we can foil him
by pateneting frets themselves: a method for stopping strings
at predefined lengths. In any case, I hope it's not possible
to copyright tunings.

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Monz and anyone else on the list

Could you offer some comments on this Guitar (or perhaps Jonathan could. I
am doing some prepurchase research on Rankin's system -- I will probably get
one in the next few months. :

snip (Monz)
"nd here at the Sonic Arts Gallery, Jonathan Glasier owns
a Rankin-system magnetic interchangeable-fretboard guitar,"

What kind of guitar? electric? acoustic? good make? poor make?

Any fretbuzz?

How is the tone? Sustain? Action?

When was it converted to the magnetic system?

How are the various layers holding up? Becoming unglued?

Easy or difficult to play?

Darren Burgess
Gainesville FL