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Palmfrets, Minnesota guitarist's invention, strikes a new chord

19 points bookofjoe 1 hour ago 16 comments

Someone 57 minutes ago | parent

https://palmfrets.com/

adzm 50 minutes ago | parent

Not a single photo of the palmfrets in the article, wow. Closest you get is a hand covering the entire device.

https://palmfrets.com/

I was much more interested once I saw the actual website.

Long story short, it's basically a fret at the bridge end of the guitar, so using it will bring the 'root' note of the bass strings up a semitone or few.

I can see this being pretty useful for drones when fingerpicking. Though combining this with normal frets on the top string will necessarily be inaccurate because it shortens the string length, so the normal frets will be slightly misplaced.

dofm 22 minutes ago | parent

Yeah — I don't really see how it can work except on the bass strings (played open).

This is a novel but slightly peculiar take on this problem. But there are lots of other things, right?

Listing for others since I suspect you know: all of this scheming about live-manipulating the basic tuning of an electric guitar dates back to the Parsons-White stringbender (and arguably further, since that was a way to get pedal steel sounds), which has led to stuff like the Duesenberg Multibender, the really extraordinary MayTrem (which keeps all strings in relative tune as the pitch is bent), the amazing Hipshot Doubleshot which lets you tune a guitar or dobro in two separate open tunings and switch between them instantaneously with a lever, etc.

Ed Gerhard added single-string frets to the bass side of his weissenborn (acoustic lap steel) that he can play with the fingers behind his slide or (incredibly) with his thumb.

All of these things are sort of fiddling at the edge of the question of a musical instrument, which is: should you confound their constraints or work within them? It's a bit like the thing about whether a dulcimer should be diatonic, whether you should add just the frets you need, whether it should be chromatic, whether it should have removable frets, etc. etc.

As a sort of hobbyist lap steel player I find all these things fascinating, but I think the ultimate question is — where do you draw the line? There are lots of things I can't play on a six-string lap steel, but should I change the instrument so I can, or should I accept the role the instrument plays, and play the things I can?

Another way to look at it is: why is the Harpejji niche? Why isn't everyone playing the Linnstrument? Why don't all pianists play the ROLI Seaboard?

ksymph 10 minutes ago | parent

I don't see why you need to draw a line anywhere. Change your instruments however much or little as you want; do whatever gives you the greatest enjoyment / practicality / sound you're looking for, or whatever else your reasons for making music might be. Or skip the music making entirely and just play around with hardware if that's your thing.

ses1984 7 minutes ago | parent

Play what inspires you to play.

Invent what you are inspired to invent.

dofm 2 minutes ago | parent

Right. It's kind of a deeply personal thing. But that is exactly why the commonplace media/marketing framing about the way these things "revolutionise the guitar" is so often misplaced.

alexjplant 42 minutes ago | parent

The Steinberger TransTrem [1] similarly allows changing pitch at the bridge. Buck Dharma and EVH used it to great effect. It's about as simple as a design as it can be but calibrating it is a process and guitarists aren't exactly a group known for their engineering prowess or progressive thinking (compared to bassists or keys players, for instance) so it never achieved critical mass. This seems like an even simpler system so perhaps it'll gain greater traction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransTrem

bena 39 minutes ago | parent

Like, neat, but I wonder what it really gets you.

A guitar has a lot of duplicated notes. The lowest 5 notes of the low E string are unique and the highest 5 of the high E for a guitar in standard tuning.

Standard tuning is EADGBe. Every fret is a half tone. So on the low E string it goes, from open E->F->F#/Gb->G->G#/Ab->A. That A is the same A as the second open string. This is how guitars are tuned to themselves, you can play the fifth fret on most strings to find out what the next string should sound like. The exception is the B which is tuned to the fourth.

It's a bit by design, you have access to a full scale within reach of your hand, no matter where your hand is.

And this really only extends the higher range. So on the high e, instead of 5 unique notes, you'll have 5 + whatever the palmfrets give you.

Now. If it jumped you an entire octave, that could possibly be cool. Basically replace an entire pedal with a bit of hardware on your bridge.

xcf_seetan 37 minutes ago | parent

He had to remove the bridge pickup... no good for me.

bryanlarsen 28 minutes ago | parent

There is a less capable model (unifret) that doesn't require moving the pickups or adding much dampening to the soundboard.

globular-toast 34 minutes ago | parent

Oooh. I play acoustic. Apparently it's not quite as good because you don't want to mess with the acoustics of the instrument, but being able to get just one more bass note on each string would open up a ton of new possibilities...

sollewitt 33 minutes ago | parent

Undjentlemanly

rc5150 31 minutes ago | parent

Yeah this isn't the game changer he thinks its going to be. Real e-bow energy here.

Really having a hard time seeing any major manufacturer licensing the design and using it on any of their instruments.

luckydata 27 minutes ago | parent

as a long time guitar player, this thing has no future whatsoever, too many compromises that buy you very little musically

afpx 8 minutes ago | parent

I’m just a beginner player, but what are the pros / cons of this vs those quick-change capo things?