Howdy all,
Just getting ready to make the jump to real frets. Have everything in line with the exception of what size to use. Medium medium seems to be popular among the folks I've written but I was curious if anybody cared to share what size they use. I'm just worried about CBG's for now but any input about smaller scale instruments would be appreciated as well.
Thanks.
Steve
Replies
my spouse reports that his fender strat has a neck with jumbo frets, so you CAN get notes to go sharp. those players play with a very light touch indeed.
Good point Diane! How about dulci's? I would imagine narrow as well. Most all of the dulci's my dad has I think are narrow.
-WY
Diane in Chicago said:
-WY
Hi.
This isn't advice. Simply saying what I have done so far and I'm sure you will draw your own conclusions. I have fretted three so far and I am very happy. I used medium/medium as it seemed to be the most standard, thinking that as I was also learning to play I would develop the right touch to adapt to whatever I had. On the last two instruments I used light electric strings and play a mix of fretting and slide. With the light strings you do have to be a bit careful of the slide, but it seems quite manageable.
One thought that I have is that the string weight and tension might influence the choice of frets. I'm not sure, but it seems logical. I hope someone else with more experience will have an opinion.
I've used low fret wire for slide-and-finger guitars to keep your slide from beating on the frets if you have to angle it off the strings at some point. All the ukuleles I've made have used narrow fret wire, just because I feel like using wide fret wire really crowds a fret board on a uke's (or any smaller cordophone) smaller scale.
These seem to make the most sense to me, but to err is human and there might be some better trade-off a more experienced builder can share for using other types.