The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

thanks, me too. cant keep my hands off it, my girl thinks im crazy .shes just jealous

Just an after thought. After removing the frets, filling the slots, removing the dots, filling with veneer - - would it have made any sense to NOT do all that filling and sand down the finger board a bit and cover the whole thing with a thin rosewood piece. You wouldn't have to worry about fret buzz that's for sure. Probably a lot of work, but it would definately be smooooth.

The work part is not too much to undertake, but the tools needed can be rather expensive. At one time I had a set of radius blocks which ran me over $150 for the entire set not including the leveling bar which was another $40. I think they have come down in price now though.

Covering the fingerboard with veneer would have required a custom radiused clamp to insure complete adhesion. Another problem would be that the veneer is probably new growth and not near as dense as the well aged old growth wood used by Matsumoku. It is possible it would "dish" from wear and play sooner than the original wood. Mr. Hayashi was somewhat of a stickler for quality, properly cured woods.

I have a CSB and the rosewood fingerboard is really nice, solid wood.

Matsumoku's commitment to quality materials and workmanship really shows in that drop dead gorgeous FS of yours. That thing is an absolute knockout. It's hard or maybe even impossible to find production guitars today with wood as nice as that.

and as much as i love the completely bare wood look. im glad for the lines as a visual cue to where im at. i need for setting the intonation .
how do they do it on a clean finger board??????? guess they have dot on the top

Wrap a thin zip-tie around the neck at the 12th fret to act as a fret. Fingers are far too inaccurate. That's the drawback to fretless. You have to make a temp fret to set into or simply guess with your fingers. Years ago I used a piece of baling wire and tape but zip-ties are much easer.

thats such a good idea. thanks,
this site rocks

Hi guys,

Reading through this thread, I noticed that someone mentioned using sawdust and glue as a filler. I use this method all the time and it works a treat!

I usually try to find a similar piece of wood which I then saw up until I've collected enough sawdust and mix it with a good quality PVA wood glue. To colour the wood you can mix a little bit of acrylic paint in with the glue to get a better colour match, and a not so noticeable finish.

I much prefer using this method as opposed to wood filler, which does over a period of time, break down and crumble.

I hope you find this useful.

Pauline