Abstract: A guitar or other similar musical string instrument having a fret-bearing fingerboard of conventional size and shape in which are placed oblique, almost parallel, arcuate frets. Frets are arranged on the fingerboard of this invention in an oblique-to-the-string relationship, appearing almost parallel and slightly arced so as to maintain a correspondence between the fret-string intersections of the invention and the fret-string intersections of the similar conventional instrument. Arcing the frets, and departing from precise parallelism, assures maintenance of the diatonic scale and the corresponding fret-string intersection relationship between the invention and a similar, but conventional, instrument. Such a familiarity and correspondence allows seasoned musicians to convert over to the invention instrument(s) with little or no difficulty.