My old A-4 was re-fretted many years ago w/ banjo style frets ... .080.
They've been leveled & dressed to the point of no return and now it's time
for new ones ... and some FB leveling.
I'm not going to go with skinny, "restoration" size wire. My main instrument
uses .050 but I'm tempted to go wider ... would it look too wierd?
Any suggestions concerning looks, tone, playability, etc would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for stopping by,
Curt
I have a number of mandolin clients who use Dunlop 6230 frets, which were Martin's standard guitar frets once upon a time. Off the roll, they are .080" wide by .043" tall. Another fret I use all the time for mandolins is old (they changed the specs since I bought a large bale of it) Dunlop 6280, which is .076" wide by .044" tall. It looks smaller, and it actually starts out a little taller. It's what I have on my own 1917 A-4.
Stew-Mac's #147 wire is quite similar, at .078" x .041" tall, and their #155 is my current fave guitar wire and what I will use as a substitute for the Dunlop 6230 when I run out. I consider these to be nice basic large wires for mandolins. I only use smaller wire if someone asks for it, which rarely happens except in roundbacks and historical restorations.
. . . .
Paul ... thanks for your recommendations.
Curt
Saga offers some interesting fret wire. For the smaller wire they have .o55" which I feel it too small to mess with as it wears out rather quickly and has very little material for subsequent fret levelling as they wear. I really like the .065" wire as my general small fret wire for mandolins. The banjo wire and the guitar wire they offer are so close to the same size at .078" and .080" they could be used interchangably.
If you liked what is on it now, why go to something different?
If you suddenly find your axe is worth more than your house save for the frets, change em. Except for that, go with what feels good.
Ron
My wife says I don't pay enough attention to what she says....
(Or something like that...)
I've got some stuff from a friend over here that matches the original perfectly.. we had a small piece of original wire that came by way of the gibson factory at parsons street.. this matches almost exactly. I'll see if I can figure out where it came from originally. So far I've used on my 1909 F4 and a 1922 F2
I have a collection of "original wire" from Gibson's checkered past and it's not all the same, but it shares one pre-war characteristic: really small. Like everyone else at the time, they bought wire from Horton-Angell and the supply was always changing as dies wore out and alloys changed.
Frets come and go in instruments that are played. A complete set of jumbo electric bass frets is not going to devalue an instrument because they can always be changed back, to please the curator at the museum. Except museum curators don't give a hang about stuff like this. Look at that joint in South Dakota and look at the motley stuff they put in glass cases. If you play an instrument, you should use the frets that make it the most fun to play.
At the top of this thread, Curt said "My old A-4 was re-fretted many years ago w/ banjo style frets ... .080." Any fret that size would be a med-large guitar fret. Having put frets that large in mandolins myself on occasion, I know that almost no one even notices. Believe it or not, some people just play the mandolin and don't obsess much, if at all, on the specs of the frets.
Frets on an instrument are like tires on a car. They wear out, they need to be replaced, and the original ones may not have been the most appropriate for your use anyway. Nobody in the violin world cares a whit about original condition, why should we?
Nothing to do with originality, I like the smaller frets. Much easier to do left-hand work. I'd put a different wire on if I preferred it, these things gotta be played job #1 and look pretty later
I recently discovered Jescar fret wire. Jescar manufactures fret wire from high quality nickel silver (18%) as well as stainless steel. I’m with Dan in that I like narrow fret wire and they offer a dimension (.40” X .039”) that is similar to the vintage width, as well as .078” & .080”. Although not all of the sizes are available in stainless steel. You can find them at www.jescar.com/fretwire.html or call Jeff Silver at 845-352-5850.
Troy Harris
Harris Mandolins
Right you are, Troy - Jescar has finally released for popular consumption the fret wire they had made up for Gibson's reissues. Jescar is an importer, and the fret wire is made in Germany, but who's counting? I've used this wire both in nickel and stainless, and it's great stuff for those who want original skinny frets. Being one of those, I'm really glad to have this stuff available.
Has anyone here worked with Stainless Steel frets? Jamie Wiens & I were talking with Charlie about the stainless fret jobs he did on a few vintage f5s right before his accident. Aside from the fact that it will mess up a set of tools, it sounds like a great idea to me!
Well being a fully-fledged mandolin nerd, I just happen to have an inches micrometer and some original pulled gibson frets, as well as my near-match wire. That stuff at Jescar (stainless or normal) 39040 is the closest I've seen to the original gibson stuff. Jamie got about .045" width,.033" height on the new-old-stock gibson wire (I mentioned this before, it came via Darryl, via Randy Wood, via Gibson/parsons, and matched pulled frets on Jack's Loar!), I got about .042" on my replica stuff.. so this Jescar width of .040" is very nice!
Dan, I've put SS frets in two instruments; a mandolin that I re-fretted, and an octave mandolin as original equipment.
The stuff is harder to work with than regular nickel silver, but it doesn't ruin tools. I don't know how you would tell that the octave has SS frets without working on them, at this point.
The mandolin, however, started with the smaller standard mandolin frets, and I could not find matching SS fret wire at the time, so the fret size went up at the same time as the material change. At first, the owner said it didn't really sound any different, but later he called and said he didn't like the sound anymore. In fact, he has gone from calling it the best mandolin he has ever owned to thinking of selling it.
You have to take into consideration, however, that this guy has never kept an instrument more than a few years, and has always traded, bought and sold instruments left and right.
John Hamlett
www.hamlettinstruments.com
Interesting John, I didn't think about fretwire changing the tone. Did you notice anything significant? It seems like it would just be an endpoint to the vibrations.. I tend to lean towards thinking he's a horse trader (Darryl had a very good post on this phenomena in the "best loar" thread)..
As mentioned above, Frank Ford has used stainless frets, as has Rick Turner, who's used it quite a bit now. I'm sure they'll tag in. I haven't been terribly interested in it because having a fret that's harder than the alloys in the strings themselves just means the strings are losing out. It's a situation of "Just because you can doesn't mean you should" and "Is more really better?"
One other very interesting wire that Jescar sells is their gold-colored wire. I tried it out on a couple of guitar clients who really murder frets, because it is supposed to be really hard. It's an alloy specifically aimed at the eyeglass trade for people with nickel allergies, but it somehow got discovered and redeployed by the folks in Germany. It felt more like lead solder when I installed it - really limp, like annealed copper or something, but was seductively easy to install as well. I liked that part. The real payoff is: it turns out that it is really tough. The fretkillers haven't killed it at all. It's showing significantly less wear than the 18-20% nickel wire.
The gold color will no doubt send up a big squawk in the Lloyd Loar coop, but viewed from a practical perspective, this gold wire has a great deal to recommend itself.
These, by the way, were Lloyd’s “fairy frets” from his Vivitones. Heh heh.
Dan, I thought it sounded about the same, but might feel a little different. I'm convinced it's the 'horse trader' in him that makes him think he's hearing a difference, and maybe the different feel too. 'Perception is reality', however, so I'd certainly never try to tell him he's not hearing what he thinks he hearing.
John Hamlett
www.hamlettinstruments.com
I guess I'm not especially hard on frets, but having steel ones just seems like a no-brainer.. you are unlikely to need a refret.. ever.. which keeps all kinds of other nice details nice. I guess I'd wear out the board with finger wear first!
one thing.. they're a bit taller than the old loar spec ones.. I wonder if I'd get a sharping not effect from fretting hard (a hard hammer-down might sharp the note?)
My favorite thing about the ancient gibson tiny frets is that it's so easy to pull off on them. Compare that to the thicker rounder ones, those are easier to slide around and zoom on without chunks of sking flying through the air.
I've been buying the reproduction small wire that Roger Siminoff sells. Nickel-Silver, .023" tang, .025" high, .040" wide, very nice wire.
Gail Hester
Regarding the stinless fret wire, I have installed it on 15 or so instruments, so have sone idea of it's character. It does effect a slightly brighter and harder tone. The difference between the stainless and nickel frets is subtle to most of us but there are some folks that can clearly hear and feel the difference. In my experience most folks like the added edge to the tone, but one of my customers had me remove the stainless frets and install the nickel ones.
The stainess frets are by far more difficult to polish. It takes lots of elbow grease and a good magnifier to achieve a good finish. One aspect to the process is while trying to buff the stainless fret wire it can erode a bit leaving a granular appearance to the surface. This may be the reason some folks think it gives a gritty edge to the sound. Whatever the reason, the difference in tone to most folks is very subtle.
Thanks for the feedback guys. I spoke to a london repairman, and he's confirmed using SS wire on a few instruments. He says the main difference is that it takes 3x as long to dress them due to hardness of material. Very interesting timing of this thread and the details within, thanks so much. Jamie Wiens is about to the point where my fretboard is being made, and we were talking with Charlie Derrington about Steel wire just before his accident, and had largely given up on the subject since.
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