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Blank fretboard diagram: guitar necks to print

Blank guitar necks to print, for mapping scales, arpeggios, triads and positions by hand. Choose 4 to 8 strings and 12 to 24 frets, markers and numbers, how many necks on a sheet and which way they face, then print it or save a PDF. The preview below redraws as you change a setting. No account, nothing to install, like the rest of our free guitar tools.

Blank fretboard diagram
The default board is dark, which looks good on screen and empties an ink cartridge fast. Before you print a stack of them, set Ink saver to Yes: white board, black lines, hollow markers, and still easy to read in black and white.

What you can set

Every setting under the preview, and what it changes on the printed sheet. The preview redraws on each change, so you can try one and look rather than read.

Setting What it does
Strings From 4 to 8. Six for guitar, four or five for bass, seven and eight for extended range guitars.
Frets 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24. Twelve is one octave and the clearest page; twenty-four is the whole neck of most electric guitars.
Realistic spacing On, the frets get closer together as you move up the neck, as on a real guitar. Off, every fret space is the same width, which leaves more room to write in the high frets.
Markers The inlay dots at frets 3, 5, 7, 9, 15, 17, 19 and 21, and a double dot at 12 and 24.
Fret numbers A number under every fret space.
Ink saver White board, black lines, hollow markers. Use it for anything you print more than once.
Neck style Classic is a dark board with gold markers. Light wood is a pale wood grain. Ink saver overrides both.
Neck direction Horizontal, the way tab and most scale charts show the neck, or vertical, the way chord diagrams do.
Layout mode Grid places necks in rows (1 to 12) and columns (1 to 6) with the gaps you set, 0 to 160 px. Free places 1 to 12 necks at the x y positions you type, on one page.
Maximum scale In grid mode, caps how large each neck is drawn, as a percentage. Lower it to leave white space around the necks.
Orientation, margin, title, colors The same page settings as every sheet here: portrait or landscape, outer margin, a heading and a footer, fonts, colors and themes.
Export Print / PDF opens your browser print dialog, where you can print or save a PDF. Export PNG and Export SVG save image files instead, one per sheet.

Four sheets worth printing

Starting points rather than rules. Set these values, look at the preview, then adjust.

Sheet What to set
Scales and positions 6 strings, 24 frets, grid of 3 rows and 1 column, portrait.
Ink saver practice sheet 6 strings, 24 frets, ink saver on, 4 rows, maximum scale 92, portrait.
Bass, 4 strings 4 strings, 20 frets, 4 rows, portrait.
CAGED side by side 6 strings, 15 frets, light wood, vertical necks, 1 row and 4 columns, portrait.

What to draw on a blank fretboard

  • The notes themselves. Fill in every natural note on one string, then the next. Check yourself against our guitar fretboard notes page, which shows the whole neck and quizzes you on it.
  • The five CAGED shapes. One neck per shape, side by side, then a full neck where they join up. The CAGED system explains how each shape connects to the next.
  • Scales by position. The five pentatonic boxes, then the slides that link them along the neck. Mark the root notes in a different color or with a circle, so you always know where you are.
  • Triads and arpeggios. Three strings at a time, across the whole neck. It is the fastest way to see that the same chord lives in five or six places.

For one chord shape at a time, the smaller grid of a blank chord chart is easier to read, and how to read chord diagrams covers the symbols. For a riff or a melody, blank tab paper does the job a fretboard cannot: it keeps the order of the notes.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a fretboard diagram and a chord diagram?
A fretboard diagram shows a long stretch of the neck, so you can draw a scale, an arpeggio or a whole position across it. A chord diagram isolates one shape on four or five frets. For those, print a blank chord chart instead: a page of small empty diagrams.
Why does the 12th fret have two dots?
Because it is the octave. Every string sounds the same note at the 12th fret as it does open, one octave higher, and the double dot marks that point on almost every guitar. The 24th fret, two octaves up, gets a double dot too.
What does realistic spacing do?
It places the frets the way a real neck does. Each fret is a half step, and a half step shortens the vibrating string by the same ratio every time, so the frets get closer together as you go up. The 12th fret lands halfway along the string. Switch it off for equal spaces, which are easier to write in.
Can I use it for bass, or for a 7 or 8 string guitar?
Yes. Choose 4 to 8 strings and 12 to 24 frets. The strings are drawn thin to thick from top to bottom, the same way up as tab, so on a bass the top line is the G string.
How do I print it or save it as a PDF?
Use the Print / PDF button under the settings. Your browser print dialog opens, and from there you can send the sheet to a printer or save it as a PDF file. Export PNG and Export SVG give you image files instead. Turn on the ink saver first if you print often: the default dark board uses a lot of ink.
Yohann Abbou, guitar teacher and founder of Guitar Social Club

Who made this

Guitar Social Club is the work of Yohann Abbou, a guitar teacher in Paris. He teaches adults, which shapes everything here: people with jobs, limited practice time and a clear idea of the songs they want to play. Drawing the neck by hand is a good way to learn it, and drawing the empty neck first is a waste of the time you have, which is why this sheet does that part. The rest of our free guitar tools work the same way, and none of them asks you to sign up first.

More about Yohann on his page, and about why Guitar Social Club exists.