Fretless Takemine Acoustic Guitar

Back in the mid 1980′s I pulled the frets out of this Takemine acoustic guitar and recorded a few tunes with it. However, I wasn’t really satisfied with the resulting sound of a fretless acoustic. Unless it’s bowed in some manner, there is too much drop in sustain. The most reasonable thing to do was to re install the first few frets completely, frets for the E – B- G strings up the neck, and leave the frets off along the upper reaches of the D – A – E  in order to allow more of a fretless bass sound in conjunction with the more conventional melodic strings and thereby create a partially fretted guitar. This allows the player to play all the open chord forms, conventional sounding lead lines and fretless bass accompaniments. After experimenting with this disposition of fretting, it seems that the guitar could be used to better advantage if a fourth complete fret is added to allow an additional full barred major chord for example. The guitar has been long disassembled and is currently about to be re fretted in the traditional manner as it came from the manufacturer. I do recommend the instrument as it is pictured here as it creates a rich sonority and palette.