Official Luthiers Forum!

So I have a creation that a friend of mine, and pro musician, played out with over the weekend. Generally things were good, but he complained that he had to go for his glasses because he had trouble seeing the side fret markers on the dark stage. Generally, I've been trying to keep this kind of thing as small as I can to keep the lines very simple and utilitarian, but I need to do something about this performance issue.

I don't want to just stick a bigger piece of plastic in there. Part of what's making them a little hard to see is this particular guitar has a Bolivian Rosewood (Pao Ferro, I guess?) fingerboard. It's a bit too light for white markers (which I used) and much too dark for black markers. The contrast either way is poor.

One idea I had was to drill a hole centered on the edge of the fretboard, through the face of the fretboard (so drilling from the top of the fingerboard in the direction of the neck), fitting a dot inlay, and then filing it flush with the edge of the neck. I'd end up with a half moon revealed on the front of the fingerboard, and a large, flat marker on the player's side. That may look nice, but I think a flat bar would be distracting.

I'd also really rather not have anything at all on the playing surface, though. I really dislike that look and won't do it unless someone specifically asks for it.

Does anyone have any ideas for a side marker design that is more visible without being tacky or flashy? As an initial thought, I was thinking of maybe drilling a hole, sticking a small copper tube in there, and then filling it with some tinted epoxy. Maybe that would be enough additional contrast to make it stand out more?

I'd love to see what others have done here.

How about using some pearl or ab micro dots?

Alembic (and Shad Peters!) does side inlays in a ring of either sterling silver, copper, or some other metal. I'm sure Shad could tell you how difficult it is, if it's worth it, any tips, etc. But to give you an idea, here's how it looks. I this it's a solid choice:

http://www3.alembic.com/img/inst/13726_LEDsL.jpg
(these happen to be LED's as the markers, but it'll give you an idea of the contrast)

Holy smokes....that's exactly what I had in mind! What a great look! It's wonderful to see it in context as opposed to just imagining what it would look like. I think something like that would completely fix me up. Not only is it high contrast, but it lets me make them a little bit bigger without looking goofy. Now I just need to figure out what to stuff it with. Maybe a small piece of shell or synthetic material that matches the color scheme of the rest of the guitar.

Hey, Shad, do you mind if I use that?

You could do some fancy light work like Ritter:

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Check out the side dots,made from 1 1/16" center in 1/8" plastic outer tube.
Small center from Stew Mac, outer tube from hobby store, found the right size under antenna supplies.
Hope that helps.

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