Fretless Frankenzouk strings

[Richard500]

Assembled what was either a bouzouki incomplete or failed project, and thought it might be fun as all frets beyond 5 were missing. Strung it up with steel. Sound is muted, of course, on the unfretted part. Ok on fretted part.
So, is it better with nylon, or give up and put the frets in?
If nylon, suggested gauges for GDAE one octave below mandolin.
Thanks!

[catmandu2]

Simplest thing to do is get a set of oud strings - then you can see which courses work best for your given scale length, tuning, etc.

[zoukboy]

Nylon will be about half the tension of steel/bronze and will not likely drive the top adequately to sound good (I have been down this road before). I have a fretless Trillium 10 string octave mandolin by Bob Abrams and I string it with either flatwounds or roundwound nickel wound. Either sound good.

[John Kelly]

When you say that the sound is muted on the unfretted part of the neck but fine on the frets, I think you should have a look at the action height and the neck relief on the instrument. It may be that the action is a bit too low for unfretted playing and especially as you have frets up to position 5. Check the height of the action around the 12th fret and also check the neck relief - which does not directly affect the string height!

[Richard500]

When you say that the sound is muted on the unfretted part of the neck but fine on the frets, I think you should have a look at the action height and the neck relief on the instrument. It may be that the action is a bit too low for unfretted playing and especially as you have frets up to position 5. Check the height of the action around the 12th fret and also check the neck relief - which does not directly affect the string height!

John, I understood that frets produce a more sustained sound than soft fingertips in general, the latter acting as damping elements, and in fact, substituting a rigid thing, like a pencil, for a finger changes the character of the sound - for the better I think. That’s what I meant by ‘muting’. Found a few web notes on fretless this and that, just not bouzouki, hence the experiment, and the question about what nylon might do. Going to try a few guitar strings to see if, though not likely sounding anything like a ‘zouk, may be interesting. Zoukboy’s comment about driving the soundboard is likely spot on - we’ll see. Anyway, here in now snowy New England, sending best holiday wishes to a newly-snowy Scotland.

[catmandu2]

Right , it certainly won't perform, with nylon, commensurate with metal - but if experimenting there are ways around it (apply a contact piezo and run it through effects, for example). Bear in mind that you'd have to enlarge nut slots, solve for fixing at the tailpiece, etc.

I love nylon/gut. There's quite a bit more shaping one can achieve on a nylon instrument. (I'd finish it in metal, and go for a different instrument entirely for fretless nylon. Banjos are easy to do up in nylon..)