Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning New member - hello! Looking to refret an electric guitar to 12 tone Ultra plus

Hello - I'm glad I found this group.
I'm a new member living in Derbyshire, UK.

I've had great interest in Just intonation for many years (particularly the works of Tony Conrad and Lamonte Young) and am just at the point where I am embarking on making some JI music myself.

I did enquire of Jon Catler recently about one of his 12 tone ultra plus necks. Unfortunatley at the moment it's really financially prohibitive at the moment. So, pragmatically, I'm looking to refret a guitar myself using tangless fretwire.

I'm really eager to try out Catler's 12 tone plus idea as an experiment.

Would anyone who owns one of these guitar necks on the list be prepared to help me with some measurements of frets?

best wishes

|Greg Kurcewicz
http://www.myspace.com/gregkurcewicz

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

Hi Greg,

Very glad to have you aboard. You may want to check out
this guitar refretting FAQ by our very own master luthier
and bassist, John Starrett:

/tuning/files/FAQ/Guitar_Refretting/guitar.html

http://tinyurl.com/c8dae2

Does that help?

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gregkurcewicz@..." <gregkurcewicz@...> wrote:
>
> Hello - I'm glad I found this group.
> I'm a new member living in Derbyshire, UK.
>
> I've had great interest in Just intonation for many years
> (particularly the works of Tony Conrad and Lamonte Young) and
> am just at the point where I am embarking on making some JI
> music myself.
>
> I did enquire of Jon Catler recently about one of his 12 tone
> ultra plus necks. Unfortunatley at the moment it's really
> financially prohibitive at the moment. So, pragmatically, I'm
> looking to refret a guitar myself using tangless fretwire.
>
> I'm really eager to try out Catler's 12 tone plus idea as an
> experiment.
>
> Would anyone who owns one of these guitar necks on the list be
> prepared to help me with some measurements of frets?
>
>
> best wishes
>
> |Greg Kurcewicz
> http://www.myspace.com/gregkurcewicz

🔗gregkurcewicz@...

Thankyou so much for your warm welcome.
The link is really interesting and helpful - thanks.
What i'm interested in the most is advice on what is actually happening on the 12 tome ultra plus scale - does anyone own one of these guitars?

best wishes

greg

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Greg,
>
> Very glad to have you aboard. You may want to check out
> this guitar refretting FAQ by our very own master luthier
> and bassist, John Starrett:
>
> /tuning/files/FAQ/Guitar_Refretting/guitar.html
>
> or
>
> http://tinyurl.com/c8dae2
>
> Does that help?
>
> -Carl
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gregkurcewicz@" <gregkurcewicz@> wrote:
> >
> > Hello - I'm glad I found this group.
> > I'm a new member living in Derbyshire, UK.
> >
> > I've had great interest in Just intonation for many years
> > (particularly the works of Tony Conrad and Lamonte Young) and
> > am just at the point where I am embarking on making some JI
> > music myself.
> >
> > I did enquire of Jon Catler recently about one of his 12 tone
> > ultra plus necks. Unfortunatley at the moment it's really
> > financially prohibitive at the moment. So, pragmatically, I'm
> > looking to refret a guitar myself using tangless fretwire.
> >
> > I'm really eager to try out Catler's 12 tone plus idea as an
> > experiment.
> >
> > Would anyone who owns one of these guitar necks on the list be
> > prepared to help me with some measurements of frets?
> >
> >
> > best wishes
> >
> > |Greg Kurcewicz
> > http://www.myspace.com/gregkurcewicz
>

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗gregkurcewicz@... <gregory.kurcewicz@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gregkurcewicz@" <gregkurcewicz@> wrote:
> >
> > Thankyou so much for your warm welcome.
> > The link is really interesting and helpful - thanks.
> > What i'm interested in the most is advice on what is actually
> > happening on the 12 tome ultra plus scale - does anyone own one
> > of these guitars?
> >
> > best wishes
> >
> > greg
> >
>
> Last I heard, Catler was keeping the fretting a secret.
> That may have changed, I don't know.
>
> -Carl
>
Thanks Carl - Iv'e just discovered the first part of my JI induction:
(In the nicest possible way) I realise that some aspects of it are like the masons! (And if anyone has found this post - Jon Catler included and all respect!) I promise not to lift one of his/your designs!
I will do some more exploring and procrastinating like anyone else!

best wishes

Greg K!

🔗Charles Lucy <lucy@...>

No nothing secret about it Carl. I believe in "free" info.

Since your new member is in UK Midlands, he could contact Damian Law, local to him, who runs Hardcore Guitar out of Northampton, and should be able to let him try out one of his LucyTuned guitars, or talk to me i London.

My contact details here:
http://www.lucytune.com

Damian's here:

http://www.hardcoreguitar.com/HCG2009/Home.html

Fretting specs are here:

http://www.lucytune.com/guitars_and_frets/frets.html

On 29 Apr 2009, at 00:58, Carl Lumma wrote:

>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gregkurcewicz@..." > <gregkurcewicz@...> wrote:
> >
> > Thankyou so much for your warm welcome.
> > The link is really interesting and helpful - thanks.
> > What i'm interested in the most is advice on what is actually
> > happening on the 12 tome ultra plus scale - does anyone own one
> > of these guitars?
> >
> > best wishes
> >
> > greg
> >
>
> Last I heard, Catler was keeping the fretting a secret.
> That may have changed, I don't know.
>
> -Carl
>
>
Charles Lucy
lucy@...

- Promoting global harmony through LucyTuning -

for information on LucyTuning go to:
http://www.lucytune.com

For LucyTuned Lullabies go to:
http://www.lullabies.co.uk

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gregkurcewicz@..." <gregory.kurcewicz@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks Carl - Iv'e just discovered the first part of my JI
> induction: (In the nicest possible way) I realise that some
> aspects of it are like the masons! (And if anyone has found
> this post - Jon Catler included and all respect!) I promise
> not to lift one of his/your designs! I will do some more
> exploring and procrastinating like anyone else!
>
> best wishes
> Greg K!

Hi Greg,

There are aspects of that, though I personally don't approve
of them. Most people here are into the open exchange of
microtonal theory and even original music, free of charge.

We might start with why you're interested in the 12-tone
ultra plus fretting. If you tell us your goals for your
music, maybe we can recommend you a different one. Several
members here have developed interesting methods for fretting
the guitar in different tunings. For example, Dave Keenan
has a method you can read about here:

http://dkeenan.com/Music/MicroGuitar.pdf

Catler certainly is a giant in this department, though, and
if you write to him I wouldn't be surprised if he helps you
out. Maybe something like, 'Hey, I'm an aspiring JI guitarist
but can't afford your neck yet. I'd like to do it myself.
Could you send me a description of the tuning?'

Others here may very well have played the ultra plus and
would probably be willing to share their impressions. You
might try asking about it also on the MMM list

/makemicromusic

which is a spinoff of this list.

Cheers,

-Carl

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗Cody Hallenbeck <codyhallenbeck@...>

I've been modifying a classical guitar after Dante Rosati's guitar
(http://users.rcn.com/dante.interport//justguitar.html), and have
found that it's a reasonably workable process. Basically, I removed
all the frets of the guitar with a soldering iron and a fret puller,
filled them with wood putty, and have been gluing on frets made out of
14 ga half-round nickel silver wire (from
http://wire-sculpture.com/store/, it's used to make jewelry) with
cyanoacrylate. One advantage is I can tune each interval for each
string against a reference tone by placing the fretlet under the
string. The disadvantage is that this process is somewhat time
consuming. Nonetheless, I look forward to doing this on another guitar
that so that I can use what I've learned to produce more professional
results (for a number of reasons, including the fact you can see the
12EDO fretlines, and the fretlines from when I failed to fret it in
19EDO: this is the ugliest guitar I've ever seen).

The frets seem pretty secure with a rosewood fretboard, although they
can be easily pulled off with pliars. I also might recommend 16 or 20
ga wire if you have very close frets (although my 22-cent syntonic
commas are playable in 1st position--haven't fretted higher positions
yet.) I think this method would probably work if you weren't
exclusively using per-string fretlets, but I haven't tried it yet. The
glued-on frets might also be problematic if you're doing a lot of
bending.

Another discovery of mine is you can get pretty much any gauge/tension
of guitar string you can imagine online. My guitar (like Dante's) is
tuned C2G2C3G3C4G4, and I'm using special order strings for the low C
and the high G from Savarez, with the rest being from a regular
Savarez Corum-Alliance set. Both of the extreme strings sound great
(the low C is almost entirely lacking in fundamental, but it works
great as a solo instrument). For electric I know there are lots of low
gauge strings sold for the metal/detuning crowd, and that the website
octave4plus.com sells a string designed to be tuned to A440.

With that said, I don't think I like the open tuning of my guitar very
much, because it's too hard to play 3rds on strings tuned a 5th apart.
I also wish the 4/3 of the scale (F) was on an open note. My next
attempt will probably be a just version of standard tuning.

Good luck,
Cody

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 11:29 AM, gregkurcewicz@...
<gregkurcewicz@...> wrote:
>
>
> Hello - I'm glad I found this group.
> I'm a new member living in Derbyshire, UK.
>
> I've had great interest in Just intonation for many years (particularly the
> works of Tony Conrad and Lamonte Young) and am just at the point where I am
> embarking on making some JI music myself.
>
> I did enquire of Jon Catler recently about one of his 12 tone ultra plus
> necks. Unfortunatley at the moment it's really financially prohibitive at
> the moment. So, pragmatically, I'm looking to refret a guitar myself using
> tangless fretwire.
>
> I'm really eager to try out Catler's 12 tone plus idea as an experiment.
>
> Would anyone who owns one of these guitar necks on the list be prepared to
> help me with some measurements of frets?
>
> best wishes
>
> |Greg Kurcewicz
> http://www.myspace.com/gregkurcewicz
>
>