Mind Riot

You've been talking about this like it's a widespread phenomena when it's based on the anecdotal experience of ONE LUTHIER? Wow. You continually jump to conclusions that are not supported by the evidence you present. One luthier getting some off spec fret wire does not mean that loose frets are a concern even on new guitars. What it means is that one luthier got some off spec fret wire, and that is ALL that it means. You've made up everything else. I mean, do you even know if he USED the bad fret wire? And you're proving my point in this post. The fact that the builder talked about his situation publicly means he caught the fret wire issue and fixed it. He either got some better wire, or crimped the tangs, or used glue, or something to prevent the frets being loose. If he just used the bad wire and sent the guitar out with loose frets that doesn't prove that loose frets are a widespread legitimate issue. It just proves that he's a bad luthier. Any way you look at it, there's no evidence to support your claims. Which is not to say that loose frets have never happened ever in the history of fretted instruments, but you've blown it up into this big thing where it happens on old AND new guitars and it kills sustain and tone, when you don't even have solid proof of one single instance of this happening ever (again, not saying it never has, just saying that you haven't proved it). Just an anecdote about a luthier getting some too small fretwire and a whole lot of assumptions without evidence. You can think I'm a jerk if you want but I've been reading bullshit about guitars that has no basis in reality and is all based on speculation and assumption for literally decades now and every now and then I'm going to take a stand for the truth and the facts. If that really makes you angry or hurts your feelings, I'd humbly suggest that you stop stubbornly repeating the bullshit you've made up, because you know it's just made up bullshit as well as I do. Nicely stated.

If a fret is so loose that it actually bounces off the walls of the slot then it's simply going to fall out of the neck. As I'm trying to explain, that is a set of circumstances that would never exist, or at least it would never exist up to the point of 'dampening' the sustain and tone and doing nothing further as you've described. New guitars are not going to have loose, worn out fret slots. The only way a guitar is going to have some loose, worn out fret slots is if it is an older guitar that has already been refretted before, probably more than once. And in that circumstance, the new frets are going to have their tangs crimped and possibly glue utilized to keep the new frets in tight. Fret slots become loose and worn out from refrets, from frets being forced in and yanked out . Which means that a worn out fret slot is not going to exist with a fret bouncing around in it for any length of time, sucking up your tone. The worn out slot will be discovered and dealt with during the refret because the refret itself is the primary cause of the worn out slot. Do you understand? New guitar=new fret slots=no vibration Old guitar=worn fret slots=crimped tangs and glue=no vibration No tech with two brain cells is going to install a fret into a slot that's too big for it and just send it out loose and say "Eh, close enough, it'll probably be fine." They're going to crimp the tang and use glue, worn out slots are why these techniques exist. And I expect what you're thinking right now is something like "Yeah, but what about fret slots that wear out over time as you play? Some frets are going to work their way loose!" Somewhere, sometime, some tech has run across just about everything you could imagine, so I can't say never. But there are guitars with original frets still firmly in place where they were hammered in over a century ago. Frets do not act like little saws vibrating to destroy their slots. When they're in proper, they do not move. And even if their slots are too big, there are relatively easy ways to make them go in proper. I have to ask, do you actually work on guitars, specifically fret and nut work? I apologize, I'm just frustrated and exasperated. I've had similar conversations with other people many times in the past, and separating facts from assumption and claims with no scientific basis can be trying. I don't see any problem with your English; I wouldn't have guessed it wasn't your first language.

What is the deal with this forum? You only get a few minutes to edit a post then you're locked out?! The only reason it posted is because I hit Cntl and Enter at the same time by mistake when I was writing the post, so I had to finish up the writing while my edit window slipped away. Okay, projectguitar, if that's how you want to run it, I guess I'll have to be really careful I don't hit the wrong keys and if I do I guess everybody will just have to deal with me posting half finished stuff then posting the finished version a bit down the page. See, you keep making these statements like they're established facts, and you don't have the slightest clue about whether they're actually true or not. There's enough space for vibration if a fret has to be glued in? How do you know this? Have you tested it somehow? Measured it? You may think that it's true because it sounds plausible to you, but facts require more rigorous standards of proof than that. And in fact, a fret going into such a loose slot is going to be the least likely to vibrate, not in spite of but because of the measures that will have to be taken to make sure it stays seated. Frets in that situation will likely have their tang crimped to created a zigzag pattern in order to reach the walls of the slot and hold the fret in, and then they'll be glued in place (or perhaps the glue will be put into the slot first). There's not going to be any vibration going on. I mean, for crying out loud, silencing a plucked guitar string, the only part of a guitar that is supposed to vibrate freely, only takes the gentlest touch with a single finger. That people think that these tiny, minuscule peripheral little things that aren't even real are somehow exerting influence over the sound of their guitar is just insane. Yeah, but you're talking about this in the context of claiming that the pressures exerted by 1/4" thick piece of hardwood is enough to actually compress metal to the point where it would make a measurable difference, and a difference from how compressed stainless steel would be under the same circumstances. You're talking about a guitar neck...exerting the kind of pressure that is most easily found in the center of the earth. We don't even have machinery yet made that can actually compress most metals, except in the fusion reaction of a nuclear bomb. But you think somebody plinking around on a guitar could cause that kind of pressure...that would compress metal. Hoooo...I need a drink...

We are so far off into the weeds on this one now, it's just completely ridiculous. Okay... 1) You think a fret with a narrower tang can vibrate just enough to dampen vibration and kill the sustain of a note? Prove it. Give us some science, some tests, backing up your claim. I'm calling this out as complete and utter bullshit, and I'm also certain that you have absolutely zero evidence to support that claim, because you're making it up. Whether a fret wire's tang digs forty thousandths of an inch into the fretboard wood or only thirty thousandths, it is not going to vibrate. Frets are seated so tight into very hard woods that the only way we can get them in there is to hammer them in or use a lot of pressure from a drill press or some other tool to press them in. If a fret slot was so oversized that a fret could vibrate that would mean you have a loose fret due for a replacement, as I said before. Things that are hammered into wood do not vibrate. Do you have nails just falling out of the 2x4s used to build your house? No, because wood holds them in place for a long, long time. And that's softer wood than fretboards, and nails are smooth, they don't have teeth to keep them jammed in tight like fretwire does. 2) So you say that nickel silver frets are actually under so much pressure from being in a fret slot that the metal will actually compress, and to a measurable degree, and measurably more than the SS frets. I assume you have some proof of this? You've tested the amount of pressure exerted by the walls of the fret slot? You've somehow managed to measure the dimensions of the tang of some nickel silver fretwire before and after installation and found it compressed to a smaller size? Because, while I'm not a metallurgist, I'm fairly sure that to actually get nickel silver to compress to a smaller size would take many, many tons of pressure. The notion that our relatively tiny amounts of pressure brought to bear on fretwire by fretslots in any way relates to that is just ludicrous. 3) Oh god. Thermal expansion from energy transferred from fret buzz? And you think that creates enough heat to make a fret actually swell? There is twenty times as much heat coming from your finger pressing the note than there ever will be coming from a string buzzing against a fret, and neither will produce enough heat over a large enough area or a high enough temperature to have any effect on anything. You think that a finger holding down a note or some fret buzz is enough to make metal thermally expand? Gee, that must be why all my fretwire gets deformed whenever I close my hand around it. The warmth of my hand is so much greater than just fretting one note or some fret buzz, the metal is expanding and changing shape, but only in the areas warmed by my hand. Makes sense to me. Science! God, what is it with people and guitars? Nothing in this post would ever actually affect anything, absolutely none of it has any kind of scientific basis, and I know for a certainty that you cannot and will not provide any kind of evidence or proof to support it, because there isn't any. This is all guitar fantasy, just made up pseudo-science, and it's all bullshit.

I can't believe this topic is still around. FRETS DO NOT HAVE A "SOUND". You're talking about a piece of metal hammered or pressed into a very hard piece of wood to serve as an anchor for one end of a string when you press it down with your finger. Everything about guitar fretboard and fret design is there to keep that piece of metal from vibrating or moving in the slightest. The only way it would have a sound is if it vibrated in sympathy with a note that was being played, and that would mean that you have a loose fret, not that the fret is contributing to the sound of the instrument. Just think about this for a minute. The frets serve as anchors for the notes you fret with your fingers. What else serves as that kind of anchor? The nut! More specifically, whatever material the nut is made out of. Open notes that are not fretted have the nut serving as the string's anchor. And there are numerous materials that have been used to make nuts over the years. So think to yourself, is there a tonal difference that you can consistently pick out between open notes which are anchored by the nut and fretted notes which are anchored by the metal fretwire? When listening to music, do the open notes and fretted notes just leap out at you as being glaringly different from each other? Can you pick out the open notes from the fretted ones on a recording, where you have to use just your ears and not your imagination? No, you can't, and neither can anyone else. Now think about this: do you really think there is MORE difference between a nickel silver fret and a stainless steel fret than there is between a nickel silver fret and a plastic nut? Nobody can reliably tell the difference between notes fretted on nickel silver and open notes anchored by a bone/graphite/Corian/Tusq/plastic nut. There's a world of difference between a nickel silver fret and all those nut materials, yet nobody can tell them apart solely by sound. Yet people think they can hear a difference between one metal and another slightly harder metal doing the same job. With no proof, yet they'll all insist that their Golden Ears can hear it and if you can't that's your problem. Hell, while we're at it, can anyone tell the difference in sound between different nut materials? No, they can't, and those materials have WAY more difference from each other than nickel frets and stainless frets do, but it doesn't make them SOUND any different. Stainless steel frets are a wonderful advancement in the guitar world. Once you get past the slightly harder installation and initial level and dress, there is no downside to them. We don't need to have a bunch of misinformation getting spread around the internet about them.

Nuts. Oh well, it's far from my first mistake and I'm sure it will be far from my last. I don't think I'm going to bother steaming it off, I'm already making another order to LMI within the next day or two and I'll just order another one. Thanks for the input everyone.

So, I'm working on this build, and I'm at the point where it's time to glue the fretboard on. I use the method where I hammer in and then nip off two small finishing nails and press the dry fretboard onto them for alignment, then spread the glue and move it around until it slips onto the pins before I clamp. Done it twice before, worked great. I don't know what I did wrong, but for whatever reason THIS time the fretboard slipped slightly off center at the body end and I didn't catch it until it was dry. So now the fretboard is slightly skewed from the nut to the body end, and if I cut and taper it properly where the frets are straight and perpendicular to the strings as they should be, the truss rod will be slightly off towards the body end. Here's some particulars: Neck: three piece African mahogany, center laminate flipped, scarf jointed 13 degree headstock Fretboard: Pao Ferro, 26.4 inch scale Truss rod: LMI two way Reinforcement: Two 1/8" by 3/8" by 21" carbon fiber strips running a half inch on each side of the truss rod. Now, at the nut end the truss rod is perfectly centered. At the body end, the board somehow slipped slightly to the bass side, so by the end of the board the truss rod is off center toward the treble side by a little under 1/4". There is enough fretboard to taper things just fine. There is no chance of me carving into the truss rod or carbon fiber channels, this won't be a terribly thin neck. I can still cut the headstock as normal. So basically all I'm wondering is if the truss rod being slightly off to one side at the body end (and the CF as well, of course) will cause any problems down the road as far as neck twisting or stability. I can always route off the fretboard and buy another one, but I don't want to trash it if it won't really make any difference in the final guitar. Particularly since the CF is in place, the rod is LMI's top of the line, and the headstock end is fine and it only goes off center slightly toward the body end, I was hoping I could just go with it and it would be fine. None of it would be visible in the end. Any and all thoughts appreciated!

Thanks fellas. It turns out I won't be needing these for this neck. I thought I was using cherry for the neck laminates because the owner of the shop who gave me the wood said this whole pile was cherry. Turns out the whole pile was jatoba (Brazilian cherry). I wasn't familiar with either regular cherry or jatoba before this project so I didn't know the difference though I did notice the "cherry" I was working with was much harder than I thought it would be. Now I get to look forward to carving this neck out of one of the hardest woods in the world. It's a four piece laminate of jatoba with a scarf jointed jatoba headstock and a double action truss rod. I kind of think carbon fiber reinforcement would be overkill. Should be interesting anyway.

LMI had a clearance on some carbon fiber when I was ordering some parts, so I snagged two rods with my order. The site listed them as 5/8" x 3/8" x 17 5/8", and so did the confirmation e-mail. When I got them, they were 5/32" instead of 5/8", the other dimensions matched. So I got these skinny little carbon fiber rods I'm not sure what to do with. I'm new to the whole neck reinforcement thing, I get the idea and the principles but I have yet to do it myself. I see a lot of discussion about whether or not to use it, but not much about dimensions (or at least I haven't found it yet). These things are much smaller than the stuff I see listed on LMI and Stewmac and whatnot, heck they're barely over a sixteenth thick. They are stiff as heck, as can be expected, but I was still surprised. Bending them with the thin side up is virtually impossible for me, and bending them with the thin side facing sideways is still pretty stiff. I'm in touch with LMI, but since it was a clearance item I don't think I'll be getting what I ordered in any case. So what size of carbon fiber reinforcement do you guys put in your necks? Does anybody use thinner stuff like this, or is it pretty much standard to use something at least 3/16" wide or something? The neck itself is cherry, with a jatoba scarf jointed headstock and it'll be getting a dual action truss rod from LMI, so I know the argument could be made that this neck doesn't need any more help to be stiff, but I'm curious about the tonal properties and such. All thoughts appreciated!

Yeah, novelty factor aside it seems simpler to go with graphite, it's what I usually use. Thanks for the thoughts everybody!

Ehh, I don't wanna do that. Guess I'll use some graphite instead.

I noticed in my searching that there was a GOTM wherein someone made a bass with a jatoba nut. I'd never heard about someone using wood for a nut before, just bone and graphite and such, but now that I think about it it really makes sense. Particularly for something like this jatoba I've got, which is pretty dang high up there on the hardness scales I've seen. It's dense, heavy, hard, seems like a perfectly usable nut material. What say ye all? Think it would work? If so, I won't need to buy any nut blanks for a long time.

Sweet, I guess I'll go ahead with it. Thanks guys! Unless it just eats all my tools. The piece is sitting here on my desk and I feel like it's staring me down.

I'm making this Tele here and I've got a pao ferro fretboard on the way. The neck is a laminate of cherry (domestic stuff). I'm going to be scarf jointing a separate headstock piece onto the neck. In the shop, there's this gorgeous long board of Jatoba that the owner tells me I can cut a bit off of to use for a headstock. I think fine, it's a hardwood and it's beautiful and free, win win. So I trace out my headstock design and cut off a tad and put the board back (trying not to hurt myself, it was two feet wide, ten feet long and 3/4" thick). I go back and pick up the piece I cut off. HOLY CRAP. It's about four inches wide and maybe ten inches long, and it weighs about as much as a small car. This has got to be some of the heaviest, densest, and hardest wood I've ever touched. So what I'm wondering is if there are any pros OR cons, or if it just doesn't matter, to have a headstock that is made from a WAY heavier and denser wood than either your neck or your fretboard. Increased sustain? Decreased sustain? Stronger fundamental notes? Weaker? Obviously being neck heavy would be a concern, but once it's cut down I'm sure it wouldn't be THAT much difference from the weight of maple. I know cherry is plenty strong enough for a neck and the fact that I'm laminating it and using a two way truss rod should mean no problems, but I was just curious since they seem to be so different. It kinda feels like putting a solid ebony headstock on the end of a mahogany neck, just odd. Any thoughts?

I'm working on an experimental Tele design that will include a tailpiece behind the bridge. One of the concepts I'm looking to try out is adding as much overall string length as possible while keeping friction low to see how much of a difference in feel it creates due to the greater elasticity inherent in the longer string. But I was wondering if I would get problems with sympathetic tones in the part of the string between the saddles and the tailpiece if they were too far apart, and I was wondering if anyone else had made a guitar with a tailpiece really far back and what your experiences with it were. Moving it forward kind of negates part of the experiment, I suppose if I was getting sympathetic string problems I'd probably just introduce some kind of mute to the design at the tailpiece so I'd still get the benefit of the longer overall string length. Anybody built a guitar with similar principles that has some thoughts to share? Thanks.

Quite right, after I made the original post I realized that I had enough other mahogany and black walnut to do a sexy laminate body without having to cut into the old growth. I'm not even sure what I'll do with it in the end. It's a pretty big chunk, 15"x20"x3". I wonder if that would be worth a chunk of change instead of using it myself?

I recently got my hands on some decades old Honduran mahogany that is just incredible. I'm planning on building a guitar with a few experimental features, using the good pickups and hardware from one of my upgraded cheap guitars. One of these is that I'm going to try out a flat radius board and an asymmetrical neck carve. SS frets. But the other idea I had involves the overall string length. We all know that pitch is determined by mass, tension, and speaking length of the string. Two 25 1/2" scale guitars with the same strings on them will have the same tension at concert pitch, whether they have a locking nut, tremolo, string through, stop tail, or some other design. But what I'm thinking about is the actual mechanical elasticity of the strings. This is purely anecdotal, but I have several 25 1/2" scale guitars all strung with 10's, a couple with trems, a string through hard tail and a top loader hard tail. It's been my subjective experience that the top loader feels stiffer than the others. My theory is that (all else being equal) the more string length past the anchor points of the strings the more mechanical give the strings will have. This is of course providing the strings can move freely over the nut and saddle slots. So a hard tail top loader will have less give than a string through because the overall length of the string is less even though the speaking length is the same. The way I've illustrated this is to picture two lengths of cable. One is five feet long, the other is twenty feet long. You anchor both ends of each cable to posts and crank things up until the tension on both cables is 30 pounds. Now you try to pull each cable from it's resting point enough to raise the tension to 35 pounds. The shorter cable needs to pulled only a little off it's resting point to achieve this, but it feels very stiff. When you pull on the twenty foot cable, you have to pull it further from it's resting point to achieve the same increase in tension, but it feels easier because the work is spread over a longer distance and the increased length means whatever mechanical give is inherent in the cable is multiplied. Strictly speaking, from a physics standpoint I suppose the work needed to raise the tension is identical, but the subjective experience is that the longer cable is looser and easier to work with, even though you have to move it further. How this applies to my idea is that I was thinking of making a guitar with the strings running freely through the back of the bridge to either a tail piece or ferrules mounted at the back of the guitar, so that the length of the strings past the saddles is maximized. I would route a ramp into the top of the guitar so the angle of the strings past the saddles wouldn't have any friction or binding points. So the only points where the strings touch anything is at: ferrules or tail piece>saddle>nut>tuner post. I would use a graphite nut, tilt back headstock, possible roller saddles (though I think that's pushing it). The point is that the strings would be as long as possible and as unbound and frictionless as possible along their entire length. My theory is that this would result in a looser and easier feel to the guitar as the strings could give more mechanically. If my idea is correct, it would also probably mean I would have to bend further to achieve the desired note than otherwise, but again that relates to the cable analogy. Same work, spread over greater area, easier feel. This would most likely be a Tele since I already have all the hardware and such, so picture a Tele with a flat radius board, tilt back headstock, and a tail piece or string ferrules mounted at the back of the body with a ramp routed out of the body toward the back side to allow the strings to reach from the saddles through new holes I would drill in the back of the bridge to allow them to run through without touching anything along the way. I don't know if I've explained this very well, but that's the idea. The physics of it seem sound to me, and I think it might look pretty cool and unique if I did it right. What do all you guys think?

Yikes, fellas. I'm not looking to start a business with this, I'm just a fellow working from home. I've done a lot of work for myself and some friends, and now some people want me to do some fretwork for them. No overhead, no employees, I already have all the tools, my only expenses will be stuff like sandpaper, the fret wire itself, naphtha, that sort of thing. I guess I should have been more specific, I'm not starting up as a luthier, I'm just doing some work on the side and I wanted to be fair with what I ask from people. Meaning fair to them and fair to me. Thanks for the responses!

I may be doing some refretting work for some folks, and to be honest the prices I see online vary wildly. I'm just curious what some of the folks around here who do that sort of thing generally charge. Say, for a level and dress, a rosewood board refret, a maple board refret with refinish, whether you charge more or the same for SS frets, that sort of thing. Any thoughts are welcome, thanks everyone.

Thank you both for your information. I'm happy to say that my first SS refret is done and it went very well, with no real problems. I documented the whole thing with pictures and text explaining what I did and my impressions on working with the wire and each step in the process in this thread on Harmony Central: http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums...d.php?t=1862514 Thanks again for contributing, and also a more general thanks to everyone who posted their experiences on working with SS wire in other threads; I did a lot of searching and reading and learned a lot from those posts as well. Sorry I don't post much here, but to be honest this forum is kind of a pain. It tells me my password is invalid after each time I log out, and I have to get a new one every time I want to post after I've been gone for a while. I'm on my fourth password for this forum, and it's pretty tiresome. Anybody know who I should contact about it? Thanks again, everybody!

Hi all. I have a few questions about doing a refret with stainless steel fretwire. Now, I already did a search on this here and read everything I could find, so please forgive me if I missed something and am asking a question that's already been answered, I did try. I've been interested in the idea of stainless steel frets since I first heard about it, but I wanted to start doing fret work with regular frets to start. I've done one refret and about two dozen fret levels, both for myself and for clients and everybody has been very pleased with my work. I ordered some SS wire from Lmii and I'm planning on refretting one of my guitars with it. I'm just wondering a few things. One, when radiusing the wire for the board, does one typically over bend it slightly like we do with nickel silver wire, or does the stiffness of the SS wire require that I match it to the radius perfectly before I seat it? I don't want it to spring up on the ends or in the middle. Also, related to that, is SS wire too tough to crimp the tangs to help it stay down? I ground a tang crimper out of some needle nose pliers that works splendidly on nickel silver wire, but if the SS won't stay down and I can't crimp the tangs to widen them a bit I don't know what else I can do. I suppose this also relates to getting the bend just right before seating. Also, I'd like to check to make sure the dressing tools I have will work on SS wire. I will of course get the board as perfect as I can before installing the frets, but I know things often still need leveling to get things perfect. For my fret levels on nickel silver wire I use the gold Fre-Cut sandpaper attached to my levelers with double stick tape. Will this sandpaper cut the stainless steel wire if I use it to level, or will I need some kind of diamond leveler? I also have a diamond crowning file, so I assume that will work fine. I have Lmi's diagonal fret cutters for cutting the wire, and they say they're made for cutting SS wire, so I also assume they'll be fine. But my end bevel file is a typical toothed bastard file hammered into a piece of 2x4 like is documented in the tutorial on this site. Will this cut the SS wire, or will I just destroy my file and need something else to do the job? I really appreciate any information anyone can give me that have had experience with SS wire on refrets and dressings, and again I apologize if I'm asking some things that have been asked before, but I did search around and read what I could. Thanks in advance for any information.

Ah yes, those were some things I hadn't considered, particularly the beveling of the fret ends. That could really end up being a problem that would require some touch up work. Seems it might be safer for an amateur like me to spray after installing the frets and just deal with getting the finish off the wire. It was kind of a pain the last time I did it, which was why I asked. Took quite a bit of elbow grease and 0000 steel wool, but it's not so bad a price to pay if it makes the job come out better in the end. Thanks for the info.

I may be refretting one of my maple fretboard guitars in the near future and reradiusing it to a flatter radius so I'll need to refinish it. I've read that most makers install the frets and then spray over the entire neck, frets and all, then the finish on the frets is removed when they're leveled and dressed. But I also saw one webpage of a small builder who installs frets over the finish. I'm just wondering if there's any practical reason to choose one over the other on a refret. It seems like spraying the board after it's been prepped but before installing the frets would remove the extra step of having to scrape or sand the finish off the fretwire, but I don't know if there's other factors that come into play here. Thoughts?

Proper fetal position technique is essential to coaxing my muse out of hiding. Oftentimes I can't come up with any ideas until I've spent some time weeping on the floor. Makes my wife a little irritated sometimes, when she asks me where I'd like to go to dinner and I collapse into a weeping lump of blubber for ten minutes before I answer. The strap is 3/4" wide. Seems to work okay. I would love to have a notched straight edge, but at some point I have to decide how much I want to invest in tools for all this. Unlike many people here, I'm not now nor do I really intend to work on guitars for a living. I started doing this in order to get my cheaper guitars up to better playing condition, and possibly to help out some friends with their guitars if the needed it. Thus far I've invested over five hundred dollars in tools for what is essentially a hobby that I'm not making any money at. I might end up making a guitar from scratch, but it would again be for myself or a friend, not for sale. I know many people on this forum are pretty much on the cutting edge of technology and technique when it comes to fret work, and I think that's really cool. But man, these tools get expensive really quick and I'm not making any money back. It might mean a compromise in that last little bit of precision and quality, but ultimately if the guitars play good and the player is satisfied then that's the benchmark for success, and I've been getting increasingly good results using the tools I have and gaining experience.

It was $30 plus shipping.