Stainless steel frets

Craig Bumgarner

Jeff, if you have only one or two guitars to do, I'd guess all your standard tools will work. Your cutting hand might be a little sore at the end of the day, but regular tools will get it done. I've fretted three more fingerboards with stainless since I wrote last and it really isn't something to be scared of. Confession though, I put off trying stainless frets for at least three year because I was scared of them. Allen Watsky was the guy who convinced me it was time to get with the times, thanks Al !

PS, you can hear two of my guitars with stainless frets on my blog. I just posted a video by Michael Joseph Harris playing three of my recent guitars. The ones he calls #1 (CB42) and #2 (CB40) both have stainless frets.

Jeff Moore

Nice guitars.
I might do a neck once a year, so thanks again.

kikiswing

Hello,

I have an old Anastasio guitar (from 1985) and the neck is starting to twist.

The gap between the strings and the fretboard is starting to increase a lot and unfortunately there is no truss rod on the guitar.

The only solution we have found with a luthier is to flatten the fretboard in order to correct the twist and to do a new setting of the bridge to get a better action.

The job is done and the luthier proposes me to install some stainless steel frets.

I was thinkig that stainless steel would be a better choice to get strong frets but it might destroy the strings faster?

Nickel alloy (18%) is softer and might preserve the strings longer. But maybe these frets will be quickly get used.

Have you ever encounter such problems on your guitars?

Do you think stainless steel frets are much appropriate than Nickel alloy?

I also have a Bob Holo guitar (from 2019) and the frets are still in perfect state so far. Do you think Bob is using stainless steel or is he mounting regular frets on his guitars?

Thanks a lot for your comments.

Christophe

JSanta

I have one of Craig's guitars with stainless frets and it doesn't eat strings any different than my Gaffiero. In fact, I LOVE the stainless frets on the guitar. If given the choice between the two, I'll always go with stainless frets. Strings are cheap (at least what I use are) and if I lose a day or two on string life, it's still a win for me.

nomadgtr

There was similar concern about string wear in the electric community maybe 12-15 years ago when SS frets were the new thing. Everyone there came to the same conclusion, no difference in string wear at all. I have a couple of Suhrs with SS frets and they're great.

Not sure about Bob's guitars, maybe Michael could comment on that. It doesn't typically list fretwire type in the specs so probably only he and Bob know the answer.

HCQ

I had SS Jescar frets put on my guitar a couple of years ago. I don't see any evidence that they eat strings faster. The up side is the frets stay in better shape longer than the original frets did over the same amount of time.

kikiswing

Thank you all for the replies, I will go ahead and get installed the SS frets on my Anastasio.

Gouch

Having built 3 instruments with stainless steel frets (none for myself) and having overhauled one of them recently 31 years after the build, my current take is:

For an electric solid-body bass with rosewood or similar fingerboard: great

For an electric solid-body guitar with rosewood or similar fingerboard: great

For acoustic guitar with rosewood or similar fingerboard, fine, but there’s a bit of a tonal difference- you won’t hear it unless you are doing ultra-close listening, but it is there. Don’t put SS frets on a 1950 D28 or anything vintage where vintage-value is a thing.

GJ guitar, no experience. (I chow through Argentine sets in 3 hours, and have trialed Elixirs for over a year and am not unhappy, no fret wear, yeah total heresy…).

From a luthier standpoint:

I would not put stainless frets on a maple fingerboard. Pulling the ss frets out (or pushing them out) might pull up woodchips off the board, which is a disaster. It’s already tricky enough with softer ns frets. If you’ve re-fretted a vintage maple Fender fingerboard I bet you’ve been in that hell.

For me, it was tricky to pre-bend a 12 radius on the stainless fret stock. I kept getting spring-back towards flatter. I didn’t want to try to hammer my way into a proper radius into a rw fingerboard and hope that would stay seated. I blow-torched the fret stock so it was real hot and then bent the radius, it worked.

Starret Piano Wire cutters (already had, they’re 50+ years old) made cutting easy. You can find them on ebay for -50 bucks). I undercut the tang on a grinding wheel which I can slow down with my variac.

As CraigB said, filing, crowning etc, no special tools needed for ss frets.

…

Caveat to all of the above: I play hard, big fat pick, fat gauge strings, I bend, I play at least an hour or more every single day…and I’ve never needed a fret replacement or even a level for my own instruments. Strings and nuts, constant maintenance and tweaking required. Maybe chalk it up to being an unorthodox lefty???

croth

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/91966#Comment_91966

I have one of Craig's guitars, a Derecho, with SS frets. I also owned a Sadowsky Tele with SS frets. I have not noticed any of the problems that have been described in this thread and I would get them again. Craig's guitar is beautiful and sounds great too.