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will refrets be obsolete in the near future ?


mbengs1

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That's why Leo Fender made his guitars bolt on. So when the frets wore out you could just by another neck.

 

I think there's another breakthrough coming for fretjobs. Instead of replace the frets you can restore them somehow ? :lol:

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Maybe only if everyone uses Stainless steel frets that can take a lot more playing before they ware. AS far as self restoring fret. Do you have a price and shipping for what you are SMOKING. These are really some of the stupidest question I've ever seen.

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So, how do you restore lost material?

Why don't you think first, before wasting bandwidth on stupidity?

 

I don't know. I have an Ibanez JEM that I rarely use coz i'm worried about using up the frets. If I have it refretted it will change the feel so I will wait for the new way of 'refrets' to come in the mean time.

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I don't know. I have an Ibanez JEM that I rarely use coz i'm worried about using up the frets.
:lol::philpalm:

 

Now this is just silly. Imagine if you said:

 

"I don't like to walk coz I'm worried about wearing out my shoes"

"I don't like to drive coz I'm worried about wearing out my tires"

"I don't like to make love to my wife / GF coz I'm worried about wearing out "

 

The trick here is to buy MANY GUITARS so the fret wear is distributed across several instruments. :hairphil:

 

How much do you play? With normal use, frets last for years and years. :rawk:

 

I'm pretty sure there's technology to build up metal surfaces by welding metal to an existing substrate, but this tech would be insanely expensive and not cost effective. In other words, even if this tech did exist, it would still be cheaper to buy a new neck or have the old one refretted by hand.

 

 

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I don't know. I have an Ibanez JEM that I rarely use coz i'm worried about using up the frets. If I have it refretted it will change the feel so I will wait for the new way of 'refrets' to come in the mean time.

 

The way I look at it, frets are like strings except we don't change them as often. When I was working with just two guitars I would get about five years out of a set of frets.

 

I was talking to a tech about refretting my twenty five year old Les Paul for the second time. He suggested stainless steel and said I would never need another refret after that.

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A company called Bond made fret boards out of Bowling Ball material. The frets consisted of the fret board being shaped like shingles on a roof so there were no metal frets at all. <<<<< My question to a salesman was, what happens when The fret board when it wears down. He said the Fret board could be unscrewed and replaced. My question them, What happens when the company goes out of business. He assured me they'd be in business a long time but sure enough, a few years later they were out of business.

 

MBengs1 Didn't your parents ever teach you that "Nothing Man Made Lasts"? Some things he makes may last longer then others but it eventually all crumbles to dust. Frets see friction and therefore wear out. You should be happy manufacturers adopted using the same kinds of frets and they are relatively easy maintained and replace otherwise you'd be buying a new guitar every year to keep the thing in tune.

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Excuse me while I go out to the shop and refret a SRV strat and a killer old mandolin that's just had the poop played out of it. No closets for these queens.

 

ps - is anyone interested in the strat? I could take some pictures and post them, otherwise I won't bother. Owner wants stainless, he's pretty hard on his guitars

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Excuse me while I go out to the shop and refret a SRV strat and a killer old mandolin that's just had the poop played out of it. No closets for these queens.

 

ps - is anyone interested in the strat? I could take some pictures and post them, otherwise I won't bother. Owner wants stainless, he's pretty hard on his guitars

 

I was hoping you would chime in Freeman.

 

Is stainless the way to go? From what I understand, they are hard on the tools.

 

What would be the difference in in durability with all else being equal? I have an old strat with traditional frets that I got refretted roughly every five years when it was my Number One. What should I expect if I went stainless?

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I was hoping you would chime in Freeman.

 

Is stainless the way to go? From what I understand, they are hard on the tools.

 

What would be the difference in in durability with all else being equal? I have an old strat with traditional frets that I got refretted roughly every five years when it was my Number One. What should I expect if I went stainless?

 

My experience with stainless is pretty limited, I've done a couple of complete refrets and one partial - from an installing and working standpoint it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, but certainly worse than nickle/silver. It takes more energy to file and polish, but honestly doesn't seem to damage my tools. It does take a lot more effort to get filing marks out and a really nice shine. I haven't tried the so called Evo wire - it is supposed to be somewhere between Nickle and SS in hardness, has more of a golden or bronze color. One problem for me is maintaining an inventory of wire sizes - I keep a few sticks of about 6 sizes of Nickle and two of stainless, and those don't completely match the sizes of stock wire (in other words if you want me to duplicate the size of frets on your guitar I might not be able to get the correct size wire).

 

When I radius the wire it seems to hold the curve a little better than nickle, I didn't notice quite as much spring back. I don't know if that would make it easier to do the Fender side pressed frets - I avoid those. Its also a bit of a bitch to do a bound board - all that filing is just a bunch of effort.

 

Does it mean that our friend Mbengs will never have to refret his guitar again? It certainly will prolong the life but stainless will wear out too. One of the nice things about doing a periodic refret is that you get to work with the board - take out any divots, possibly work with the shape. If your frets last forever then the board should too. Generally when I do a refret I make a new nut (and saddle for an acoustic).

 

I looked up the pricing on one of my favorite repair websites - this tech charges $250 for a complete Nickle/Silver refret, $280 for SS. That's honestly not much more and for some players is probably worth it.

 

Ps - I read comments on how stainless sounds different from softer alloys - I can't hear it but then I can't hear a lot of things in internet guitar lore. Some people think bending is smoother on stainless

 

Pps - I use nickle wire on all of my personal guitars (but then I get a special deal on refrets)

 

Ppps - in my previous life I worked in a manufacturing plant that made food processing equipment. Much of what we made was stainless - easy clean up, no rust, long life. All of the people who worked on it had too sets of tools - one for stainless, one for mild steel. We charged two or three times as much for SS as mild steel.

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Instead of wasting money on new frets just sand down the wood between them

As you can see this leaves you plenty of headroom to dress out any dings in the metalwork.

But if you are levelling them remember to use a sanding block over four or five frets at once to keep the action even, you can see the one near the right end is pretty bad, you might need the angle grinder to make that one playable.

The Chordite Luthiery

 

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