Orangewood has unveiled the latest addition to its Del Sol lineup – and it could not be more on-trend if it tried.
Do you ever pick up your electric guitar and just feel restricted by all those old fuddy-duddy metal bars on the fingerboard? Or that the EADGBE standard tuning is so b-o-ring that you would rather go out and play padel, or take a pottery class?
Well, Orangewood has just the guitar for you: in collaboration with Connecticut’s TreeTone Guitars, it has just turned its Del Sol Baritone into a fretless guitar that the brand promises will open up “new possibilities for pitch expression, fluid voice leading, and tonal exploration”.
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When you think about it, the Del Sol Baritone Fretless feels so on-trend, so 2026, so darn au courant, that you wonder why you don’t see more offset fretless baritone guitars kicking around – Eastwood Guitars’ delightfully oddball Sidejack Baritone is the only other mainstream build in the $699 to $1,000 price backet we can think of right now.
And the Del Sol Baritone quite a very different guitar – it is a more conventionally offset doublecut, for starters, but also has a semi-hollow chambered construction, with one unbound f-hole on the body, controls for the pickups mounted on a metal plate a la the Fender Jaguar.
It’s undeniably cool. How could it not be? It has a roasted maple neck, a pair of cream-colored P-90 pickups, a TOM-style bridge and a rosewood fingerboard that is inlaid with maple fret markers, which makes it an excellent introduction to the initially disorientating experience of going fretless for the first time.
“From improvisation and microtonal music to modal compositions and experimental sound design, the Del Sol invites a more intuitive and exploratory playing experience,” says Orangewood.
(Image credit: Orangewood Guitars)
Sonically, the possibilities are endless. These guitars can help get you out of a rut, can help find new glissando approaches to soloing and constructing melody, and when someone messes up during rehearsal you can always make your guitar sound like a swanee whistle from the Looney Tunes cartoons.
And if you want to do microtonal a la Angine de Poitrine, you do microtonal – there are no frets stopping you here.
But seriously. For $795, this looks a pretty sweet build. There is a mahogany body, Grover Roto-Grip locking tuners, and some other little tricks that would be headline-worthy if it wasn’t for the guitar itself being so fundamentally headline-worthy; such as the electronics.
Yes, the P-90 pickup pairing is an ideal choice for a guitar like this – Eastwood’s Sidejack Baritone is similarly endowed – but who could have forecasted that this Orangewood x TreeTone two-hander would give it a phase mini-toggle switch that comes into play when both bridge and neck pickups are selected.
If you want an idea of how this sounds, check out the demo videos for the fretted Del Sol Baritone – it has one, too.
The big question is: can Orangewood do for fretless electric guitars – for fretless baritone guitars – what it did for the rubber-bridged acoustic guitar? Well, time will tell. Here’s hoping this launch will attract less controversy. Because for $795, the Del Sol Baritone Fretless looks like a steal. And you get a gig bag.
The Del Sol Baritone Fretless is shipping from early December, in Pitch Black only. Find out more over at Orangewood.
P.S. Stray thought: that TreeTone neck plate is very cool.
