Guide To Violin Frets

"Sacrilegious!"

You may have seen this comment on any number of posts or videos featuring a fretted electric violin. Are frets on a violin really a faux pas? We maintain that they are not. That said, they are not meant for everybody, and most players can and should still opt for a fretless instrument. However, there are some special cases where frets could be the right choice for you.

Above all, there are two things you should understand about violin frets:

1. Frets are landmarks, designed to get you close to where you need to be to play the right note in tune, either by sight or by feel.
2. Frets are not magical, and are no substitute for lots of intonation practice and an optimal monitoring rig.

Learn all about the different fingerboard options available to electric violinists below.

Why frets?

There are a few specific cases in which a player would benefit from using a fretted violin. If none of these apply to you, then congratulations, you can stick with a traditional fretless fingerboard! In fact, it's probably less than 10% of players who are in one or more of the situations below and who may benefit from using a fretted violin, so right off the bat, let's be clear that frets aren't for everyone and may not be for you. Here are some reasons one may wish to have frets:

• Loud on-stage environment - If you play in a loud band where monitoring can sometimes be difficult, frets can provide a crutch in those louder moments, or during solos where you're away from your monitor.
• Singing while playing - If you are both a singer and an instrumentalist, it can be difficult to intonate your voice and fingers simultaneously. Using frets to provide a rock solid foundation for your played notes can take the pressure off and allow you to intonate your sung notes with the instrument.
• Fingerboard patterns - guitarists can easily replicate fingerboard patterns up and down the neck (e.g. the CAGED system), whereas on the violin, shifts to higher positions are often made relative to familiar home positions like 1st and 3rd. If you need to play licks or solos in high positions, and particularly in less familiar keys, you can use frets to copy familiar fingering patterns.
• Self-taught beginners - while it's always advisable to follow the guidance of an accredited teacher, frets can lower the barrier to violin playing entry for self-teaching players. If you're starting later in life and it's a personal hobby, frets can be a good way to train your fingerboard hand on placement and pitches.

How To Play With Frets

Violin frets work a little differently than guitar frets. This is due primarily to scale.

Guitarists depress the string behind the fret for the note they want to hear. This causes the string to stop on the fret, and defines the vibrating length of the string as from the bridge to the fret itself.

Violins are much smaller, and their frets lower profile. To play in tune* on a fretted violin, you should place your finger on top of the fret, not behind it. If you depress the string behind the fret, it is likely that the string won't even tough the fret and will result in a flat pitch. It could also cause the string to touch the fret, but barely, resulting in fret buzz or poor tone quality in addition to being out of tune. Therefore, violin frets are almost universally locator frets, designed to be played on top of.

*Intonation is a relative term, which is discussed further below.

Vibrato, Portamento, and Glissando

Common sense would tell you that a bunch of frets would interfere with your ability to perform vibrato or glissando effects, at leas without hearing the note bump into the frets. The truth is, when you play on top of the frets and use sufficiently light finger pressure, you can adjust the pitch infinitesimally around the fret. Your vibrato, portamento, and glissando won't suffer at all when you play lightly.

Intonation (and Playing In-Tune)

With fretted instruments such as guitar, the term intonation has to do with how the bridge or saddles are adjusted in setup to vary the string lenght as needed to allow notes to stay in tune up and down the fingerboard. This concept exists with violins, too, although to a somewhat lesser extent. It is more important with the design of the Wood Violins Viper, for which the bass strings will need to have a longer vibrating length than the upper strings to be in tune at the octave (12th fret). This is done by simply angling the bridge and testing the 1st harmonic against the fretted 12th semitone until they match as closely as possible for all strings.

If your fretted instrument sounds out of tune as you move up the fretboard, the bridge may need to be adjusted. Moving the bridge towards you will make the pitch of each fretted note slightly lower, and moving it away from you (closer to the fingerboard) will make each fretted not slightly higher. You can angle the bridge slightly as described above to give the best average intonation across all the strings.

Once intonated, there is still the matter of playing in-tune, and this is a stickier situation, especially for seasoned violinists with well-trained ears. The frets on violin fingerboards are spaced for 'equal temperament', a tuning system that divides the octave equally into 12 half steps. Most violinsts learn to play in tune according to 'just intonation', which derives from whole-number frequency ratios based on the natural harmonic series.

If you are familiar with just intonation, you'll know that when you play two double stops that share one pitch in common within a key, you'll actually have to change your finger placement to keep both in tune. Obviously, that means that to play with just intonation on a fretted instrument, you will need to vary your finger placement above, ahead or behind the fret slightly.

Finger adjustment around the fret is more relevant to double stop and solo playing. When playing single note lines with a band that may have keyboardist, guitarist, and bass guitarist, you'll actually be better in tune with them all by sticking to the equal temperament layout of the frets (assuming you've tuned your open strings well!).

Different Fret Types

Here are the types of frets available from various brands, from highest to lowest fret profile:

• Standard frets - What we refer to as standard frets are metal have a similar shape, height, and profile. These are somewhat tall frets that you can both see and feel sticking up. They are rounded frets, and the center of the fret represents the center of the in-tune (equal temperatment) note. Brands that use "standard" frets (unless otherwise noted) are NS Design, ZETA, EVL, Cantini, VOLTA, Stratton, Jordan, and most other brands that install frets. That said, there is significant variance in fret height among these brands. NS Design's are a good median at 0.6mm, while Cantini are much higher at 0.93mm and ETJ have quite a low profile at just 0.4mm.
• Wood Violins frets - These are similar to the standard violin fret except that the rounded crown of each fret has been filed flat. The frets are filed flatter on the treble side than the bass side, accomodating for string diameter. The flat design causes strings to fret out even less than can happen with rounder frets. They provide a good visual and tactile confirmation of correct finger placement.
• EVL wooden frets - Electric Violin Lutherie offers two fret options: a 'standard' fret that uses narrow mandolin fret wire, and wooden frets, which are even shorter, and narrower.  They’re about half the height and width of the metal frets, and built into the fingerboard (all one piece, fret and fingerboard), so it sounds like a fingerboard, string against wood, and not the brighter sound of a string against a metal fret.  It acts more like a Phantom fret (see below), in that it’s barely noticeable but functionally frets the notes. The left hand feel is improved over metal frets as well.
• ZETA 'Zero Frets' - Zero frets are the lowest frets available that are at all raised above the fingerboard. They are filed down to only 1/4 the height of a standard ZETA fret, making them a great visual indicator, but providing very little tactile feedback. These are a good option for someone who likes the look and visual aid frets provide but does not want much, if any, difference in fingerboard feel from a fretless violin.
• Wood Violins 'Phantom Frets' - The lowest of them all, Phamtom frets are filed down until they are flush with the surrounding ebony fingerboard, making them purely a visual reference with a perfectly smooth, fretless feel.

Strings For Frets

You want to shred your solos, not your strings. It's true that frets can lead to faster string wear and reduced longevity, however, there are a few things you can do to mitigate that and save yourself money on string replacements...

• Reduce finger pressure - You don't need to squeeze the string down hard, just enough to stop vibration at the fret! The lighter your touch, the more your strings will thank you.
• Choose titanium wound strings when possible. Steel strings or titanium wound strings will stand up to fret wear over time, whereas more common aluminum wound strings will wear out, unravel, or shred fairly quickly. Titanium wound D'Addario Helicore strings are a fantastic option for 4 or 5-string violins. Another fantastic choice for fretted violins are Prim Electric Violin strings, which are steel core with tungsten winding.
• Maintain your frets - frets themselves can wear down over time. If you feel flat spots after years of playing, it may be time for a redressing, which will even them back out. Very old frets may need replacement altogether, but that's nothing you should have to worry about for a very, very long time.
• Burrs - if you find that your string is shredding or breaking in the same spot repeatedly, look for a tiny burr in the offending fret. Even if you can't see one, a few gentle passes over the fret with a fine nail file could potentially solve the problem.

Videos About Fretted Violin

Our channel has numerous YouTube Shorts covering topics relating to frets. Check them out and subscribe to our channel. Below are longer form videos with demonstrations of all of the topics written about in this article, and with graphics showing fret concepts...