I guess the fret markers have totally gone out of fashion on classical guitars.
My first classical guitar was the bottom of the line Yamaha, and it has inlaid dots like a steel string. My first relatively decent classical guitar, an Alvarez, introduced me to the world of the totally unmarked fretboard.
I tried to find images of classical guitars with dots, even looking at all of Yamaha’s entry level lineup, and the fretboard dots on nylon string guitars seem to have gone the way of the dodo.
How’s this for a non-answer?
Because they look good there.
Or to quote the punchline of an old joke: Everybody has to be someplace.
If I were limited to one sentence, I would say, “All those theories about scales and intervals are meaningless, because (as I said), you don’t have to start with an open string.”
Well, duh, but do you really think it’s coincidence there’s dots at the 12th fret (octave)? It’s clearly not completely arbitrary. I don’t think there’s a need to follow scale degrees–all you need is visual guideposts that help you determine where you are on the fretboard. But they do happen to align with important intervals like the fourth and the fifth of that particular string, which makes some sort of sense to me. Obviously, you don’t necessarily care about where the fourth and fifth are of any particular string because you’re not necessarily playing in that key, but if you’re laying out dots on a fretboard, those seem to be like logical places to put dots.
My classical guitars, Ovation, Alvarez, La Patrie, and Aria Sinsonido all have markers along the upper edge of the neck. I have seen some $10,000+ Spanish made guitars that do not have any fret markers.
I agree that “all you need are visual guideposts…”
I agree that it’s logical to mark the 12th fret octave, even on guitars where that’s where the fingerboard meets the body. I also think it’s helpful for that one to look a little different, for example 2 dots instead of one.