Dear Anthony and All, Just two things I would like to clarify:
First, those of us who use meantone temperaments sometimes *do* move frets (yes, in the middle of a concert) to play in different keys. The commonest case is if you're playing in G major, you can move the first fret towards the nut to get a decent F# on the fourth course - this means you no longer have Ab on the first course, Eb on the second course, etc. but since you don't need those notes (in fact G# and D# might be quite useful) it doesn't matter. The exact amount you move the fret is not that crucial, so it doesn't take long to move it between pieces. Minor keys are more difficult: in G minor you can't move that first fret because you need Eb, Bb, etc. so you either have to put up with a sharp F# or use a tastino.
Secondly, we don't expect to be able to play all notes in all positions all the time. If I have my first fret in the "high" position (the position further from the nut) I have a lousy F# on the fourth course and a perfectly good one at the fourth fret of the second course (my fourth fret only gets moved up if I'm in a rather flat key - most of the time the F# on the second course and the C# on the third are needed). So I have two F#s, one horribly sharp and one which sounds fine. As long as I don't need to play them simultaneously (ouch!) it's OK. This is really the same as my argument above - just look at a few pieces in G major and see how many of them use the first fret for anything except that F# on the fourth course. You'd be unlikely to find any, except if your piece modulates to A minor (think of Go from my Window) - but then it's a G# on the first course, not an Ab, so you want the same (low) fret position anyway.
As a generalisation one could say that for sharp keys one tends to keep the first, fourth and sixth frets in a low position (nearer the nut) and in flat keys one tends to move those frets to a high position. But depending on the piece, one would probably only move one of those frets rather than all three.
Sorry this is not very clear - I'll go off and find some concrete examples. Best wishes, Martin To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
