What's the reason behind the position of fret markers?

[Platon]

I always took the positions of the fret markers as a given thing. But why are (on most guitars) the frets (1), 3, 5, 7, etc. marked and not for instance 2, 4, 6, ... or whatever? Seems to be a historical thing and luckily everybody is using essentially the same scheme. But is there a musical reason? Natural harmonics?

[sepsis311]

My guess would be that they started at the 12th fret to mark the octave of the string, and worked their way outwards... but im probably wrong.

[pawel]

These are also the frets that allow for natural harmonics...

[Artist]

Originally Posted by pawel

These are also the frets that allow for natural harmonics...

If that were the reason there would be at 1-3/4 dots on every fret.

[Devo]

only a complete guess.. but its more likely to be a manufacturing reason then an asthetic or musical reason in my onpion.

it may be to do with the least number of fret markers you can use to map out the whole board..

you dont need one in the first as its visually marked by the nut... and the second is kind of easy to find if you can easily locate the first .. so if you sart at three and then mark every second that might be the most economical way to mark ou the frets.... But then you encounter problems when you reach the octave as it wouldnt be marked ... so you need ot have two 3 spaces

in short i havent a clue

[shader]

You can look at it as a min. pentatonic scale with a dim7 in it

[guitarshredder7]

i think they did it to show you where the frets are

[AlexBLA]

i think you can do natural harmonics with no frets. i could be wrong

[m0p]

They do NOT mark natural harmonics. Some of them make some very dead sounding harmonics, but only 7, 12, 19 and 24 make decent harmonics.

[The Euphor]

m0p, you should listen more to Mattias IA Eklundh.

On older guitars you'll probably find other patterns.