what is a fretless guitar?

Answer 1

The fretless guitar is a guitar without frets (including similarly configured bass guitars known as fretless bass). It operates in the same manner as most other stringed instruments and traditional guitars, but does not have any frets to act as the lower end point (node) of the vibrating string. On a fretless guitar, the vibrating string length runs from the bridge (also called chair), where the strings are attached, all the way up to the point where the fingertip presses the string down on the fingerboard.

There are two often cited advantages of fretless guitar:

Unique sound. The fingertip is relatively soft (when compared to solid and hard fret) and absorbs energy from vibrating string much faster, thus, effectively making a pizzicato (more damped) sound.
Musical freedom. Performer has a relative freedom of positioning the hand and playing by ear, not constrained with particular musical tuning, as in case with fretted instrument. This can be viewed as a disadvantage, as playing fretless instrument usually requires much more training. It also requires much tighter coupling between ears and fingers while playing.
However, acoustic fretless guitars are very quiet and are barely used in practice. Two notable modifications are usually used instead:

Bass guitars feature much heavier strings and bigger resonant body to amplify the sound, thus sound relatively loud even fretless.
With an invention of electronical sound amplification, particularly electric guitars, sound can be amplified to the necessary extent.

Answer 2

There are very few fretless guitars but there are alot of fretless basses. A fretless guitar would be way too hard to form a perfect chord on and extremely difficult to bend notes with. There are some fretless guitars that are used for playing slide since you never actually fret the instrument. Many of those as well as pedal and lap steel guitars actually have lines where the frets would normally go so that they know their position on the neck. Fretless basses give a unique sound and are great to slide notes on.

Answer 3

On the neck of a guitar there are usually several metal bars that divide the neck into sections. Each division, if you press a string down between it, moves the note played up by a half step.

A fretless guitar does not have the division, so it is possible to play notes in between the normal half step notes or to slide between notes. Violins and must other stringed instruments are fretless.

Answer 4

Frets are those little thingys that go across the neck of the guitar, that you push down on to make the strings shorter, which makes a higher tone.

A fretless guitar would have a neck like a violin or cello, without those little thingys. Thereby requiring more skill from the player to stop, or press the strings in exactly the right place for the tone he desired. Would probably use nylon rather than steel strings, and have a much softer, quieter tone.

Answer 5

a guitar without a fret!!

Answer 6

one without frets