Fretless bass guitars

 

— a separate category are fretless instruments, completely devoid of nut. Almost all of them relate to bass guitars. In such instruments, the role of the nut is played by the musician's finger, which presses the string to the fretboard. The technique of playing fretless guitars is noticeably more complicated: firstly, to extract clean notes, you need a very precise position of the finger; secondly, this design reduces the volume of the sound and the duration of the sustain, and special playing techniques may be required to obtain the sound of the desired volume (and heavier strings for basses). On the other hand, the lack of frets gives the professional musician a number of additional options. For example, on a fretless neck, you can make very smooth slides, without stepping between notes, and the instrument itself is not tied to a standard 12-step scale, which can be very useful in some areas of music (experimental, oriental, etc.). Also note that the fretless bass guitar, both in sound and playing technique, is very close to the classical double bass, which is especially appreciated by lovers of jazz and other similar styles.