I built the first semi-fretless neck, which was for a Paramount pot, about twelve years ago. I have had a local luthier make two more for me since then, one is a short scale, so I can tune the banjo to open A. I use a brass plate, which tapers down to a knife edge starting about halfway between the 4th and 5th fret position, and ending right behind the 5th fret. Thus the 5th fret is functional. With the first neck I made, I first tried using rosewood veneer for the surface, but the result was too muted for my taste, so I changed over to brass, which is crisper in tone. I do try to stop the strings along the fretless part with the nail whenever possible, but it often isn't possible. There is a muted quality that comes with the fretless that is part of the trade off to get the flexibilty in intonation that is so unique and exciting. But then, life is always about trade-offs, and compromises with perfection.

In addition to producing liquid slides, I think a lot of old time tunes that we think of as in either Dorian or Mixolydian mode are actually in between, because they use a scale which instead employs the quartertone which is between the major and minor third. This is sometimes called the neutral third. One might speculate that the the Dorian and Mixolydian scales are merely derivations of this a more ambiguous scale, with the Dorian sounding tunes being those where the performer had a tendency to sing or play the note closer to the true minor third, and the tunes we think of as Mixolydian those where the singer or musician leaned more towards the major. To hear how the semi-fretless banjos sound, listen to the MP3 files on the MP3 Audio File page.