10th fret inlay mark

Al Watsky

Most Jazz guitarists play in flat keys all the time. Db = 9th fret makes all the sense it needs to when your playing in Bb minor for instance.
Its not so important .
If your used to sight reading changing the location of that dot could be a problem.
My guitars are old.
They have no side dots.
I marked 9 with white out on the side of the board .
Don't bother with the front because I don't look there anyway.
I have one new GJ guitar , I had the builder put both dots on 9.
Hey , its my guitar right.
If in the future it needs movin' , its easy enough to do.
There is plenty of ebony around here.
In ebony if you have a plug cutter you can easy fill a drilled hole with out much problem.
If you want to be minimalist its really best to leave the guitar neck unmarked except for a single dot at the 8th fret.
If there is a right way to do it thats it.
No markers except for side dot on 7.
Just a thought.

kevorkazito

Thank you for that insight. I've been planning to visit a luthier to get side dots on the neck to match the references on the rest of my guitars.

It's been bugging me for some time. Even the great Lenny Breau says it's maddening when you don't have the dots matching (in reference to capo'g his guitar.

I knew there was a reason aside from its an Italian design lol

Also I didn't want to wuss out since classical string instruments don't have dots at all.

Michael Bauer wrote: »

What you should be is distracted by 9th f........

Scoredog

Yeah, be a man, impress chicks with your 10th fret dot!...;)

Buco

Stringswinger wrote: »

The Europeans were used to classical guitars that have no dots at all.

I think this is the solution.
I've been wondering lately why the hell do we need dots at all?
I don't think it would take long for anyone here to adapt to a no dots guitar.
But,
I got so used to a 10th fret dot that when I picked up a guitar with 9th fret dot it was totally messing me up when I was playing a head for a song that hovered around that area.
I pulled out electrical tape out of my pocket, covered that damn thing and played fine through the rest of the rehearsal.

I don't use my other guitars that often so I can't tell you if playing other type of music on an electric would mess me up.

Al Watsky

Most people like a reference point .
The most universally accepted central dot is fret 7 for classical guitars.
Its more or less in the middle of the neck.
You see an 7th fret dot on European classical guitars.
Hauser's amongst them .
People request it .
Improvisers like more dots than classical players, they will ask for 3 7 12
People who sight read like dots.
Sorry for my senior moment.
7.

Michael Bauer

I go back and forth with no real problem these days, but sorry, Stringswinger, anyone who thinks a 9th fret marker makes logical sense is going to have a tough time making the case. It's not about chauvinism, it's about the way a guitar is tuned that makes the 10th fret the logical place for the marker. Nor does it matter where the idea came from. Markers on the 9th fret are simply a bad habit inherited from someone's misguided judgment, and apparently never questioned, which is how most stupid ideas become "standard" (Burning witches used to be standard, too, but it doesn't mean it ever made sense.). There is simply no logic that accounts for 9th fret markers from a guitarists point of view. So rather than being fools, perhaps Maccaferri et al. were just making a long overdue improvement. Truth is, if it were easy to do, I'd have every electric I own redone with 10th fret markers. As it is, several of them are vintage, and I couldn't ever justify altering them. So I just adjust to the guitar I am playing, and scratch my head that someone, somewhere, thought it ever made sense, and that it stuck. The funny thing is that long before I ever saw a gypsy jazz guitar, I was questioning the 9th fret markers. When I found Selmacs, I felt like I had come home. Finally, someone made a fretboard that made sense! Be at home with your "standard" all you want, but don't tell anyone it makes any sense, or that students wouldn't have an easier time learning the instrument if it were changed, because you'd be wrong.

Appel

Paulius Volkovas wrote: »

... i have 15 years of playing experience on electric guitars ...

Ho ho! My child - you are lucky to have discovered the most beautifully designed guitars of all time at such a young age. You are spared the agony of 40 years of suffering with dots at the ninth ...

It would be fun to join in with an argument about the virtues of tens over nines but I think, on that point, every possible pro and con has spoken - oops, I mean, has been spoken. Heh. But I do have some thoughts on how to push the adaptation a little bit.

Many jazz educators like to relate the guitar fingerboard to the piano keyboard, and I have had teachers in the past talk about the "white note fingerings"; probably everyone knows these and it would be irritating if I described them, except to say that it is simply the way the key of C appears on the neck.

What I noticed just at about the second week of struggling with the bloody tenth dot is that it, along with the seventh position marker, neatly indicates the seventh-position white note scale - the key of C Major as it sits neatly within that four-fret space.

Yes, upon first encountering the Selmer-style demarcation, we all understand that immediately; but I am trying to seek that moment where the deep connection happens, when I *see*, and something understood in the mind drops down into something known in the bones.

Of course, the jazz guitar educator would like us to spend some good amount of time with our fingers carefully dedicated to a four-fret position, but we all know that this approach to guitar technique assumes a guitar with a perfectly balanced voice and a fairly low, even action and actually responds with the same dull consistency of a keyboard - and if we wanted to live with a painful abstraction that seems to deny the acoustic guitar's very nature, we wouldn't want Gypsy Jazz as even a tiny part of our musical life and certainly it would not be the whole of our world. I don't believe that a well-trained classical guitarist would think in the "white-note" way, either. The beauty of the guitar is revealed horizontally ... HA! as with some other things in this fine life ... I only found this old way helped me to "see" the tenth-fret marker as a guide and not a distraction.

Anyway, if the stupid "white-note" thing doesn't help, I'll try also to describe another approach. As I'm working on new tunes and looking to create movement in the bass line right around the tenth fret, I'm consciously taking a second to think, "D is on six, at the mark", or "G is on 5, at the mark", or even "C is on four, at the mark"; also, I'm doing the same thing with melodic lines, thinking "F is on three, at the mark", or "A is on two, at the mark" and "D is on one, at the mark". and of course changing to keys or applying substitute chords with flats or sharps and working and applying the same sort of mindfulness. Which is too slow a mindset for performing but it's ok for practice and it is also helping me get more fluid.

Of course, of course, the best thing to do is train to play without looking at the fingerboard - but how many of us, even after decades, can honestly play entirely without at least sometimes looking down?


It would be helpful and interesting to read about what other newcomers are doing to adapt to the tenth-fret mark.

ya-honza

Not a problem on my Collins Petite Bouche for now, it has the 9th fret dot at least, I'll save the head scratching for when I eventually change

kevingcox

Take them both off all your instruments and voila, clear sailing. You will get used to it.

Buco

@stuart couldn't agree more, they're just a visual anchor, and more of a nuisance than aid imho. They'll help a total beginner like a training wheel, once you're playing the instrument I don't think anyone needs it. Maybe one on 7th fret like Al said.