Hey all. I have a few questions on fretting....
1. For those of you that use WIRE for frets, what is your method for making them nice and straight?
I cut my frets from rolled wire, and tried my best to straighten them, but they just are not straight enough for me. I tried to use a block of wood on top of the wire piece and then roll the wire back and forth thinking that would work. Any ideas????
2. For those that use FRET WIRE, what size do you usually use, medium width and high height, OR medium width and medium height?
I noticed some bulk fret wire on CBGITTY.com, but was not sure which I should use. The medium-high is out od stock, so I was thinking that was the more popular or most commonly used.
I am trying my first time with frets and would like to use the wire, since I already bought the wire, BUT would like to use fret wire in the future.
Any and all suggestions will be welcomed.
Happy building to all of you, and thanks for your time in answering my post.
Douglas
Tags:
I've never used anything but regular fret wire so I can't help you with the first question.
For the second I can offer this:
Like a lot of things in guitar making, the fret wire you choose is a balancing act between playability and precision. Smaller fret wire is the easiest to position accurately as the top of the crown is easy to have perfectly in line with the fret slot cut. The disadvantage of smaller fret wire is that it takes more force to cleanly break the string over it, so you really have to mash down to get a clean note. This translates to a "slower" neck, meaning that the speed at which you can fret the strings on the instrument will be reduced (no shredding). Also, frets wear down over time and you'll have to replace smaller frets much sooner.
On the other end, jumbo fret wire is generally more desirable from a player's perspective as it provides greater sustain, clean notes are easier and faster to achieve, and bending techniques are much easier as well. From a builder's perspective, jumbo wire can be a challenge as you have to take care to dress it accurately. Due to its size, it is easy to re-crown it either sharp or flat of the true fret position after the leveling operation just because there is so much more material; if you don't keep the re-crowning file perfectly centered on the fret slot then you'll put the crown to one side.
From the player's perspective, probably the most desirable fret wire on a guitar is stainless steel jumbo fret wire. Jumbo for the reasons I just listed, stainless steel because it is the most durable and has the longest life. From a builder's perspective, this is the most pain-in-the-ass wire to use, again both for the reasons I listed above and the fact that stainless steel is extremely freaking hard and well beat the hell out of your tools as you dress it.
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