Freddie Sipo (more often known as just Sipo) has just finished his new record, Year of the White Rose. Sipo has been an engineer in Los Angeles for years and, unsurprisingly, uses some interesting gear.

First on our list to chat with him about is his Fernandes Custom Fretless guitar (with a sustainer pickup and a mirrored glass neck. The first thing we wanted to know was how playing a fretless guitar effected his music.

Sipo says that when he began working on his latest record he had one rule: the record had to be an “organic guitar rock album.” He wanted drums, bass and guitars. Then he started thinking about the textures synths could make. Finally he asked himself: ”What can these instruments do that a guitar can’t?”

“They can drone with sustaining amplitudes, they can reach octaves both higher and lower, they can pitch bend further and they can have parallel effects setups with multiple signal sources (ie oscillators) where guitar pedal boards are serial setups with one signal source: the guitar,” says Sipo. “The way to transcend these limitations was through setting up a pedal board that could [split] the guitar signal and run it through parallel effects chains and through the use of a fretless guitar with a sustainer pickup.”

He adds that playing s fretless is dramatically different from playing a fretted guitar both in terms of technique and sonically.

“I didn't see the point in playing fretted guitar parts on a fretless. It is more difficult to play and keep in tune and doesn't have the attack and definition that makes a fretted guitar sound so amazing,” he says. “The role of the fretless guitar in my music is to play the parts that couldn't be played through fretted means. So anything that drones, glisses, and has undefined attacks on note or chord changes is through the fretless.”

Sipo says you can pitch and bend between whole chords of different shapes going far beyond what you can do with a slide. You can also do double pitch bends.

“For example you can slide one note up while another slides down, or you can vibrato a note cent-wise while you pitch it through semitones and octaves,” says Sipo. “Also in Pro Tools or in any multi tracking software you can create orchestrations that pitch and gliss similar to strings which is definitely something I couldn't do with my fretted guitars.”

He came up with the idea for this fretless when he was working as an engineer.

“When I was engineering a Merle Haggard album a few years ago a pedal steel player came in to play on one of the songs,” he says. “I thought that with some delay and big reverb it could be an amazing instrument for atmospherics and ambience. I tried to play it and realized that it had a much steeper learning curve than I was willing to put in to it.”

Sipo decided to stick with what he knew and take a standard electric and remove the frets.

“This idea also had the advantage of being able to slide between different chord shapes and inversions as well. I decided to go with a Fernandez guitar because of the sustainer pickup on the neck. This is like having a built in E-bow for every string,” says Sipo. “The advantage of this was to get beyond the very sharp decay inherent in fretless playing and to be able to infinitely sustain notes and chords of my choosing. With the flip of a switch the pickup can also harmonically sustain an octave higher. I bought a Retro Rocket Pro and had the neck converted to glass with no fret markings. I then had it set up with medium gauge ribbon wound strings for a smooth feel and a thicker tone.”

Sipo likes the tonal opposition the fretless has to fretted. He says it is a more “damp plucked” sound.

“The flesh of the finger absorbs the vibrating energy of the string much faster than a fret. It has a much mellower sound to it,” he says. “I also like the fact that I can get ‘between the notes’ and pull out tonalities inaccessible through fretted means.”

This guitar is not, however, for playing fretted guitar parts. He says it is not advisable to try but he points out that as an addition to your musical palette it is a beautiful instrument.

Sipo says that no special amp is required for the fretless but that you should make an effort to get the right effects together.

“I think that the fretless guitar really shines when combined with effects. This is the area where it comes into its own apart from the fretted guitar. I would think of my pedal board as a modular synthesizer and the fretless as the oscillator driving it,” he says. “This made many of the sonic possibilities reserved for the synth available to me as a guitar player including ambient drones and wide octave reaches. Using pitch shifters with the fretless was very interesting, as well as delays, ring modulators, phasers, and flangers. Filter LFO's sound great too.”

Year Of The White Rose is available through iTunes and Amazon. Sipo is also putting a band together and working on live shows.