The
bandora is a late 16th-century instrument with a longer string length for its bass strings than for its trebles. It is depicted in
Praetorius' music dictionary Syntagma Musicum published in 1619. The concept of the multiscale fingerboard goes back to at least 1900, when the first patent for such a fingerboard was filed by E. A. Edgren. (Patent #652-353, E. A. Edgren) In his 1900 patent Edgren describes in his claims: "… a musical instrument the combination with a sounding body or box, of the following instrumentalities, to wit: a neck approximately in the form of a double convex in cross section…" a plurality of frets secured to said neck, said frets being positioned at an angle one to the other so that the first and last frets incline in opposite directions "... it will be noted that the bottom flange of the head C runs at an angle so that one side of the neck B will be longer than the side opposite. The frets diverge, running from the center outward, so that the lower frets extend slightly in a direction opposite to the upper frets". This patent is no longer in force. When it was, it affected only instruments with a curved fingerboard, such as most steel-string guitars. The first modern multiscale fretboard was used on an instrument called a
StarrBoard, invented by John D. Starrett in 1977. Starrett developed a tapping instrument that employs a matrix of halftones, fretted horizontally with strings spaced vertically, to allow one fingering to cover all scales. Because of the large range of notes from low B on a 5 String Bass, to high B four octaves above, however, he needed a way to have a long scale for the low B, but a shorter scale for the high B. He simply laid out the two scales he thought would work and connected the dots. The person generally credited with first using “fanned frets” on an electric guitar is Ralph Novak, although this is not considered a true multiscale. In 1989 he was awarded the patent, which expired in 2008. Ormsby Guitars is credited as the first to use the name Multiscale, after creating a more accurate system for laying out the fretwork in non converging points. The expiration of Novak's patent and subsequent production of "multiscale" guitars by more companies has led to an increase in interest and sales of multiscale guitars overall. ==Fanned-fret guitar==