Do larger frets improve tone?

constantine

Hi everyone, I have a cheap sell Mac clone im working on with rather narrow frets and not much snap on the high E string. If I were to replace those narrow frets with something more standard sized, perhaps wider and taller, would I get a better tone?

Thanks, Dean

paulmcevoy75

I'm going with no.

Frets don't have much to do with tone at all. They are a piece of metal that provides a nodal point to shorten one end of the string to a pitch. The fret shouldn't really be contributing much if anything to the sound of the guitar. You could maybe make a case for the material of the fret to change the sound of the guitar (sort of like the brass nut sensation of the 1980s) but I'm going to go with no there too.

Ultimately a tall fret and a short fret made of the same material should not affect the sound of a guitar as long as they are both functional and well installed.

In my opinion....

voutoreenie

I agree with Paul and speaking as someone who has a Selmer-style that at some point was re-fretted with jumbo frets, the only difference I noticed is how they feel vs. medium frets...and tbh, I really like feeling more of the fret under my fingers so I'll probably consider using jumbo if one of my other guitars ever needs to be re-fretted. That said, I don't think it makes any difference with the tone tho.

@constantine you mentioned the high E isn't projecting enough, is it a 10? If so, try switching it out for an 11 and see if that helps - my "cheap" gitane sounds great with 10s except for the high E string and after taking advice from friends plus posts on this forum I decided to replace it with an 11, was a super improvement.

Buco

A friend luthier and the guitar tech in Chicago I used to go to both thought wider frets help with the tone. No solid ground for it, they just thought it does. A luthier friend said when the fret is wider, there will be more energy transferred to the neck and even though the neck isn't the first thing responsible for the sound of the guitar, it's all part of the same circuit.

There was an article in Fretboard Journal that talked about bar frets, and at least in this article people who played guitars with bar frets were in agreement that they sounded better than their counterparts.

constantine

Thx "butso" !