Ask yourself, do you need the headache?

[Freuds_Cat]

G&L 12-Tone Ultra Plus bass by Freenote

And the blurb goes......

This revolutionary tuning system keeps the standard 12 frets in place, and adds 12 new frets straight from Nature's tuning system, the Harmonic Series. Hear notes and chords you've never heard before, all perfectly in tune. A total of 24 frets and 36 different pitches gives the guitarist truly new options to go where no man has gone before!

I thought you might just be able to just bend the normal notes rather than go to this extreme  






http://www.freenotemusic.com/site/store/guitars.html

[Dave W]

It's an elegant solution to a problem we didn't know we had. 

[Freuds_Cat]

It's an elegant solution to a problem we didn't know we had. 

LOL, well said 

[clankenstein]

just add a dark stage and alcohol,be playing  avant jazz before you know it.

[Freuds_Cat]

heh true.  I spent 30 years playing so that I'm able to enjoy myself and play without looking at the fingerboard. Now I'm supposed to buy one of these and start from scratch.......

[ilan]

This is interesting. I attended a masterclass on upright bass in classical Arabic music, of course on a fretless neck all the quarter-tones are doable, and it turned out to be very exciting. It takes some getting used to, the modes - maqams - sound very strange at first. Also they are not really "quarter tones", but more like "3/4 tones", in the sense that sometimes you divide a minor 2nd (like A-C) into two halves (instead of three half-steps).

I'd give a bass like that a try. But they should have made the extra frets a different color.

For guitarists specializing in Arabic music, adding quarter-tone frets is common practice.

[Freuds_Cat]

Even though I regularly play a fretless bass I didnt consider those in between notes being get-able via that method. Probably because they are not notes I look for. I can understand it if you have an interest in the different eastern styles of music maybe but for the large majority of us 

[exiledarchangel]

Quarter tones are my nightmare, sometime ago I decided I wanted to learn to play Oud, but never got in the spirit of it.
Here's a nice jap site with lots of stuff about different types of fretting (it has some CRAZY WEIRDO wiring stuff too). Go to "fret scale calculator" on the right.

http://www.geocities.jp/dgb_studio/

[ramone57]

12-Tone Ultra Plus Bass neck $549 (plus $30 shipping within the U.S)     holy cow!

[Pilgrim]

It's an elegant solution to a problem we didn't know we had. 

Hey, many people have made a great livelihood out of discovering problems that no one else knew they had, then proposing (profitable) solutions for them! 

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Years ago (12+), there was a guy covered in Bass Player who had made his own microtonal bass out of a Warwick IIRC, and he was offering to retrofit other necks. According to BP, he was "big" in Europe at the time, but I had never heard anything about him before or have since. Of course, my knowledge of commercial music outside of US pop/rock is pretty limited.

[Highlander]

Does it come in fretless...?

[Pilgrim]

Does it come in fretless...?

YOU are my hero!   

[Highlander]

Think nothing of it, Al... I am nothing but your humble servant, and it all comes as part of the service...

[gweimer]

It's an elegant solution to a problem we didn't know we had. 

And I get all sorts of comments on my bass with "them crooked frets".  Imagine if I showed up with one of those.  And I'm guessing it would take a little longer than 30 seconds to adjust to that.