4 Foot Fretwire

[Wademeister]

Well I was a bit miffed today as I was preparing to cut the frets for my bass project. I figured the lengths of them and added them up and was disappointed to find that I'll need about 56" for each bass and I bought the 4' pieces from LMII expecting that to be the right amount for a fret job. Obviously it was bad planning on my part to not check it before buying the wire, and a 24 fret (plus zero fret) jazz bass neck apparently takes a bit more wire than a standard guitar but not THAT much more... So I started measuring my USA Strat which is 22 frets and found that it would need about 50" if the frets were cut off about 1/8" over the finished lengths and the job was done without any mistakes. So that made me wonder if I'm just allowing too much for trimming or if 4 ft is actually not a nice length to start with. Seems like any guitar with more than 22 frets can't be done with a single 4' wire.

Have any of you guys fretted your guitars with a single 4' piece of fretwire?

[killemall8]

Yes... I do it with exactly 48"... But i cut it perfectly flush with the fretboard on all of my frets.

[Wademeister]

Yes... I do it with exactly 48"... But i cut it perfectly flush with the fretboard on all of my frets.

I looked up some of your work. That's a lot of top notch stuff, you really have your act together. Looks like you usually do 22 frets and maybe sometimes 24?

As for myself, I decided to go with a shorter/wider crown and bought 12 ft of the stuff so I'll have plenty for the pair I'm building even allowing for experiments and mistakes. Live and learn!

[killemall8]

Yes... I do it with exactly 48"... But i cut it perfectly flush with the fretboard on all of my frets.

I looked up some of your work. That's a lot of top notch stuff, you really have your act together. Looks like you usually do 22 frets and maybe sometimes 24?

As for myself, I decided to go with a shorter/wider crown and bought 12 ft of the stuff so I'll have plenty for the pair I'm building even allowing for experiments and mistakes. Live and learn!

Thanks,

I actually use 24 frets 95% of the time. I just recently started using 22 on my explorers, because that is what people want instead.

[Woodenspoke]

I sell fret wire and always sell 6 ft of wire, That way even if you make a mistake you have some extra. Covers bass as well as guitars beyond 24 frets.

One mistake and you might as well have paid the few extra dollars in the first place?

[MzI]

The other option is to buy the tube of wire from Stew Mac. Yes more upfront cost, but chances are you won't run out anytime soon.

[Ripthorn]

I just did a 24 fret guitar with a 4 ft section from LMI and had probably 8 inches left over, which blew me away, since the neck is the perfect width all the way along (at least it looks that way during mockups). I cut the wire at perhaps 1/16 wider on each side.

[Woodenspoke]

Honestly it doesn't pay to have to cut your wire real close to the FB when you install it. I noticed that even with a good wire cutter you can mash the ends a bit and you certainly dont want to have to install wire that is mashed into a clean slot. Ideally I like to see 1/8- 1/4" over hang on each side. Also gives me some exposed wire I can tap sideways to lock it in. The additional time expenditure playing with the cut more than offsets any additional cost benefit.

Is it really too much to buy an extra 2 ft, how cheap can you get?