Fretting cleanly

[Rogerblair]

As I age (mature?…nah) I find that I’m more sensitive to the nut width/neck profile characteristics of my guitars. I have four acoustics at this point, two USA Guilds, a Martin, and a Gibson J45.

All are great guitars, but this morning I determined that I can’t cleanly fret an F chord in the first position (using the thumb-over cowboy shape) on all of them. Only on the Guilds can I easily fret that chord shape and allow the high e string to ring cleanly. On the others, the e string is muted a bit by my hand.

The Guilds have 1-11/16” nuts and a 12” radius on the fretboard.

Just some Monday morning rambling. Are there some of your guitars that facilitate clean playing better than others?

Roger

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by Rogerblair

...Are there some of your guitars that facilitate clean playing better than others?

Roger

Funny you should mention this. Just this weekend I picked up my Martin 00-18V which, for reasons I can't explain, I hadn't played in a couple months. It felt so easy to play - not just in ease of fretting but also it felt like there was more room between the strings near the nut. Its nut slots are set about the lowest on any of my guitars, which would explain ease of fretting. But the extra room had me puzzled because it has a 1-3/4" nut just like all my other guitars.

I know string spacing can vary even for guitars with the same nut width. So I took photographs of the fretboard near the nut on the 00-18V and my Collings 02H for comparison. I flipped the image of the Collings over so you can compare the string spacings.

00-18V vs 02H String_Spacing.jpg

You can see the string spacing is slightly wider on the 00-18V, but only by 1/32" as measured with calipers center-to-center from low E to high e. This difference is so slight that I almost didn't post this picture. It seems crazy that 1/32" would be noticeable. But it is.

Many years ago I didn't even know guitars had different nut widths, and wouldn't have cared. Maybe it is an aging thing.

So, yeah, my 00-18V is noticeably easier to play than my other guitars. It's made me more aware of how sensitive playability is to string spacing.

[jaymarsch]

I am very sensitive to neck specs and in my experience, age has played a factor. For me it is some minor arthritis and an old finger injury. I can’t really do the thumb over on certain guitars anymore so I have found work arounds for certain chords. I also have been playing in some dropped tunings as I can maximize the use of open strings which puts let stress on my fretting hand. Currently, my short scale Kramer with it’s 1 and 23/32” nut width and modified low oval neck is the easiest for me to fret. But, I do okay with my long scale 12 fret at 1 and 3/4s nut width because I don’t have to extend my arm as far out. So there are a variety of factors that impact how efficiently I can fret on a particular guitar.
Best,
Jayne

[mawmow]

Well, I can also fret more cleanly on some of my acoustics and not on some
others, and I see many reasons : action at nut that is a bit too high, nut width
(I NEED 1,75" nut width and my Gibsons with 1,725" was less easily played)
and big C neck profile.

What I see with the F chord with the thumb fretting the low E is that the palm
is in contact with the back of the neck as in baseball grip, so that the base of
the fingers lye almost on the low side of the fretboard so that the base of the
fingers would touch the high e string, so muffling it. This also causes the wrist
to be in extension and this makes it more difficult for the fingers to act properly.

My coach urged me to take the more classical posture so that my big knuckles
would get farther from the face of the fretboard.

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by Rogerblair

As I age (mature?…nah) I find that I’m more sensitive to the nut width/neck profile characteristics of my guitars. I have four acoustics at this point, two USA Guilds, a Martin, and a Gibson J45.

All are great guitars, but this morning I determined that I can’t cleanly fret an F chord in the first position (using the thumb-over cowboy shape) on all of them. Only on the Guilds can I easily fret that chord shape and allow the high e string to ring cleanly. On the others, the e string is muted a bit by my hand.

The Guilds have 1-11/16” nuts and a 12” radius on the fretboard.

Just some Monday morning rambling. Are there some of your guitars that facilitate clean playing better than others?

Roger

Hi Roger, for many years I happily played on a 1973 D35, and (thought) I had no issues.
I foolishly sold it to a friend to fund the purchase of a Martin J40 ostensibly he same nut width, scale, string spacing etc.

I discovered to my dismay that I could not play it with string buzzes due to string spacing.

I could not work out why, but the tone and feel of the J-40 certainly did not suit me and I decided that my new guitar was holding me back - perceiving that the shallower neck profile was somehow changing how my hand curled around the neck and how my fingers landed on he fretboard.

Soon after Isaac Guillory



He lent me his Martin D35-S with a 1 & 7/8" nut width



It was wonderfully easy to play with all hammer-ons, pull-off and such clean quick and clear, despite e wide shallow neck profile.

I commenced a long and frustrating search for a similar Martin.

I 1999 I ended up with my first Collings a DS2h with a 1 & 13/16" nutwidth which I played until 2019, selling it in a blue funk.

See :

Now, all my flat top guitars are 12 fretters (generally wider fretboards),
and whilst string spacing over the nut vary between makes, they are mostly fine with varying profiles and scales.

I also lost a lot of weight since an illness in 2017 and my fingers got thinner (and older!) so I can now manage 1 & 3/4" nuts on my archtops and my Waterloo (short scale, deepish profile and and wide saddle string spacing.

Even my four remaining Collings have varying neck profiles but are all OK to play in my style.

So, when considering whether a guitar will suit you

See :

Hope that helps.

[Bluenose]

In the off chance that you are using medium strings I suggest you try lights. Making that switch helped me fret more cleanly up the neck.

[Andyrondack]

I bought a used guitar which had frets lower than average, I had it refretted with slightly oversized frets ( I just told the repairer I wanted bigger frets and left it up to him) It's now way easier to hold down any chord, seems to require less pressure to produce a clean sound.

[TBman]

Roger, I haven't played a full F chord in I don't know how long, Kind of the blessing of playing in open tunings.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by Rogerblair

Only on the Guilds can I easily fret that chord shape and allow the high e string to ring cleanly. On the others, the e string is muted a bit by my hand.
Just some Monday morning rambling. Are there some of your guitars that facilitate clean playing better than others?
Roger

More a neck profile issue than a fretboard width issue:
See if vintage rings any bells in this article:
https://stringjoy.com/guitar-neck-sh...-v-u-profiles/

[Glennwillow]

Hi Roger,

I can't play a clean F chord the way you describe with my thumb over the neck and pressing down the low E string and get the high E string to sound cleanly at my stage in life, either. The only way I can play a clean F chord these days is to barre it using my index finger across all 6 strings.

For me, I think my arthritis has finally taken a toll on my finger and thumb flexibility. So I have had to adapt. I suppose this is just one my sign of aging, at least for me. For me, it doesn't matter what guitar I am playing; I have the same problem on all of them.

Sorry you are having to deal with this, too.

- Glenn