Fretless...

[Malhomme <malhomme@vete.ucl.ac.be>]

I won't give you any tips about just intonation, but I converted one of
my guitars to a fretlesss. I also then from several testing converted it
to a kind of baritone (a fifth lower).
Of course you can't rely anymore on the marks on the neck (but in case
of search for j. i. I guess you don't care). Due to the heigth of the
nut, notes near the nut will be up more than a 1/4 of tone, because of
higher string tension (on heavy gauge strings only) . As you progress to
higher notes, the effect diasppear.
Try to replace as many strings with round wound. You can even find (not
easy, but..) 0.016. I tried flat wounds and 1/2 round, and the sounds
gets to dark. Really darker than the same strings on fretted guitar.
To end here my babble: to get a nice sound, with thin strings, you'll
have to pick the string nearer the fretting position. And I forgot:
Chord working becomes of course a real nightmare, but that you can
imagine...

Olivier mahomme