A couple months ago I decided I wanted to experiment with microtonal guitar. For those unfamiliar, microtones are notes in between the 12 natural notes of the western chromatic scale. First I looked online, like one does, for microtonal or fretless guitars to no avail. Every guitar microtonal or fretless guitar was significantly out of my price range or made cheaply and unethically overseas. This didn’t deter me though, as I then looked into my next best option: making my own instrument.
I was introduced to microtonal music by Tolgahan Çoğulu, a professor at Istanbul Technical University. He had created a new type of guitar with adjustable frets suited for playing microtones, but unfortunately such a guitar is inaccessible to me.
I had maybe done woodworking once in my life before, so I was reasonably scared about mutilating a guitar. I had decided on making a fretless over a fretted microtonal guitar, as inserting frets requires more skills and machinery than I have. I bought a used guitar, a fret remover, polyurethane, a saw, and real wood veneers (eco friendly).
The process was relatively simple, but there was some nuance and a lot of repetition. First I set up the guitar as normal (I ended up needing to replace a potentiometer before I even started). Then I removed the strings, the neck, and the frets. After cleaning the fret holes I glued in the thin wood veneers with wood glue and let it dry. I cut them down and sanded the fretboard before I took the neck outside to get sprayed with many, many layers of polyurethane finish, which I repeatedly had to let dry then sand down again to get a smooth finish.
The net result was a pretty good guitar. There were some air bubbles and the finish is uneven in places, but overall it is very playable. I have now been experimenting with composing using microtones and my new instrument. It has been a bit tedious to learn about microtones as there are few good english resources available, but otherwise I’ve been enjoying it.
The featured image is “The Guitar Player” by Pablo Picasso.
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