10th fret inlay mark

Don Price

For those of us who grew up with guitars having the 9th fret marker, the 10th is indeed distracting -so much that if one is a visual person it will mess with the "intuitive" nature of one's playing. My solution was to have a small dot inlay placed along side the fret board at the 9th fret. Since I rarely view the face of the neck from straight on, it worked like a charm.

bopster

Just played a gig with a 10 fret marker after weeks of the ninth. Only fudged a position change once.

I really think the horizontal thinking that is inherent in learning how to phrase like Django helps alot to have more than dots as anchors.

Al Watsky

I was trained on a 12 fret guitar with no dots.
The 14 fret changes things.
So ?
On a classical guitar 12 fret to the body no cutaway a single side dot on the 7th fret is all that is necessary for sight-reading .
I think on a 14 fret a dot at 7 and double dot at 12 would do just fine.

Jazzaferri

i think that you are quite right @Al Watsky

Jprjr

Paulius Volkovas wrote: »

Im very distracted by the 10th fret mark on gypsy guitars, i have 15 years of playing experience on electric guitars and playing a gypsy guitar with a 10th fret mark throws me off.
I am thinking to order these inlay decals and place the mark on 9th fret, and somehow hide the 10th fret mark (maybe put a black decal on top of it).

anyone is dealing with the same problem?

I know what you mean, it can be distracting.
But if you think about it, it makes more sense to have a marker at the tenth fret than the 9th. The notes at the 10th are all natural, as opposed to the ninth, which is a nightmare! So if you are thinking in terms of note location as opposed to guitaristic positons or patterns, it makes much more sense that as many of the notes at the markers be naturals.

Jazzaferri

I play both and interchange regularly. After a few weeks of doing this it only takes a minute to adapt. I did play a classical for 30 years with no dots so maybe that changes things somehow. I play a lot without looking at the fretboard.....even larger jumps....maybe that changes things a bit too....but I do find myself using the dots sometimes if they are there.

10thfretBlues

The question I have is: when someone who is accustomed to a 9th fret marker plays a guitar that has a 10th fret marker, what mistake do they make? Do they accidentally play a note on the 11th fret? Put another way, do they use the 9th fret marker to help them find notes on the 10th fret...?

pmg

Sharpies to the rescue! Color in the offending dot and add a new one with a silver or white Sharpie pen on the side of the neck - put a small piece of clear scotch tape over it and it should be good to go for many months at a time.

Playing this style of music is tough enough without having to get used to an unfamiliar dot placement :-)

10thfretBlues

My 1970 Yamaha guitar has side markers at 5, 7, 10, and 12. This makes sense to me because out of the 30 notes referenced by these marks, only two are accidentals. Also 3, 5, 7, 10, 12 is the pentatonic scale for each string.

My curiosity lies in whether guitar players accustomed to a 9th fret marker (not 10th) use the marker as a reference to play notes at the 10th fret (not 9th). I am a super-newbie at guitar, and this is interesting to me from a music theory angle (of which I now very little to begin with, ha!).

Chiefbigeasy

I too feel the need to have the dot where I want it. I used some whiteout to draw a dot on the neck edge of my Yamaha Silent Guitar I use for quiet practice. I fumble enough fingerings as it is without adding more because I visually confuse a position. When I see how many great players seem to almost constantly look at the fretboard while playing, I’ve got to believe we use visual cues to get to the right note.