Fretting Templates

[Keith Howell]

What are the most useful fretting templates to have?

I require a 36" and a 34.5" right now and the laser cutting service has a minimum charge and will cut me 6 templates for the same price. (Around $20 US)

What suggestions? 25.5", 24.75" what others?

[Carl Dickinson]

24.5" for a parlor, 27" for a baritone.

[Paul Dzatko]

25 “ is common, 650mm and 640 mm for classical

[Clay Schaeffer]

If you can get them to add a couple of frets to the bottom of the template you can use some (23 fret) bass scales to double as guitar templates. A 34 inch bass scale can also be used as a 25.5" guitar scale with the addition of two frets at the bottom (to make 20 frets). It will also work for a 27 inch baritone template. And a (19 fret) 24 inch scale.
This might allow you have templates for quite a few different scale lengths by the simple addition of two or three frets to the bottom of the template.
The reason this occured to me is that I have been shortening bass guitar fingerboards (23 and 24 fret) to turn them into guitar fingerboards. On the older smaller bodied guitars the fingerboards were often only had 18 or19 frets.

[Keith Howell]

Yes I discovered that a while back looking at Fender scale lengths and doing some mathematics using the 12 root of 2. They all relate.

You can start with a 36 inch bass length and derive them all simply by choosing an appropriate nut position. The Gibsons dont they seem to have done their own thing.

The Fender thing was probably due to a cost cutting issue by Leo Fender to make mass production of all the fretboards for all the different models on one setup. From what I've read he was a notorious penny pincher but I think rather brilliant cost saver.

[Bob Hammond]

you might look online for fret2find - you can print paper templates for any scale length, string spacing, number of strings, and fanned frets. If you look in the library, you can find this fixture that I made to cut slots when I was 'one-handed'.

https://www.ekips.org/tools/guitar/fretfind2d/

https://www.mimf.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=4058