Which Fretwire?

[Guest Mavet]

Hi

I'm currently in the process of building my first guitar and was wondering if there was any difference between the fretwire of different companies (LMI, Warmoth, Stewmac, Dunlop etc.), which is easier to work with, have consistency problems etc.

I'm looking into jumbo wire so if any of you have any experience with different makes and can shed some light on the matter it would help a lot.

many thanks

[Mattia]

I've used Stewmac wire and really bad locally sourced wire. The Stewmac one works very nicely, wears well, no problems with it at all. I've been tempted by stainless steel wire before, but I'm currently not tooled up to use it, so I'll let that pass for now.

'Jumbo' can mean quite a few things, though, so you need to figure out what you like (wide, tall, wide and tall, and how wide and tall?). I'm partial to medium or slightly tall wires (basically, StewMac's 'common' choice and the 'Dan Erlewine's Favourite Wire' option, I forget the numbers right off the top of my head...)

The advantage of wire from places like LMI or Allied Lutherie is that it comes in rolls, pre-radiused, so you don't need to make/buy something to bend the wire before installation. The StewMac stuff comes in straight sections.

Edited October 22, 2007 by Mattia

[jmrentis]

Yeah, thats the same size I like, the medium/higher wire. Funny I had just looked this up when talking with someone else like a day ago. Its .092"wide and .048 tall. I've heard good things about the LMI and Allied stuff from a couple different people, they don't have that exact same size the medium/higher, but they have stuff close enough. I'd probably go with the .093 wide and .043 tall in the LMI wire, which is pretty close. Best of luck. J