alt Hacker NewsThis feels like a really puritanical take on things. Fanned frets and multiscale absolutely help with the playability of an instrument. It’s physics, there’s nothing mystical or gimmicky about it.
Maybe YOU don’t want it, but it prevents strings from going flabby without needing much heavier gauges. Which does help with a wide range of playing styles and genres.
Unless you also believe that all guitars should have a single scale length or something, and a single neck profile and fingerboard radius. Otherwise if you concede that it comes down to feel+preference then there’s no argument to make against multiscale instruments.
Building multiscale means more work to build which means higher prices and more complex repairs. A reasonable jump in work/cost for marginally better playability. Also more things for the builder to fuck up and get wrong. That's kinda normal though, there's a lot of terribly-built instruments on the market and a lot of customers who can't even tell (e.g., people still buying Gibson despite decades of everyone saying their instruments don't QC).
I have all kinds of wild/bizarre/insane instruments for different purposes -- there's nothing puritanical here (I spend most of my time at NAMM in Hall E). I'm just saying that for 99.9% of players though these features aren't doing a damn bit of difference and most people are buying them out of gear-worship.
I think it's wild that we're talking about the "physics" of neck construction/playability and tension when at least 80% of guitar players can't even properly set up their own instrument and their tone sucks. It's in the fingers, man.
If any of you think that cargo-culting among software developers is bad, guitar players are that 10x over. If not 100x.