What do you thinkof these frets?

[Russ Donahue]

I just changed out the tuners on my MF.
With all the strings off, these grooves were much easier to see.

[pops1]

Not bad, sometimes for something like this I will simply run a crowing file on the dented frets to make the dents narrower, without changing height. If it is playing without problems it keeps from leveling the frets when the rest don't need it, and shortening the life of the frets.

[Nevin]

How does it play? I suspect that if you didn't know how grooved they were there wasn't a problem and you can hold off on a fret leveling.

[Timbofood]

Mine get a WHOLE lot more worn before I even think about refretting.

[Mandoplumb]

I keep a crowning file and do as pops1 said anytime I notice much growing. The frets brad (spread out) as well asgroveand the crowning removes the brad and restores the fret to proper width.

[pops1]

I keep a crowning file and do as pops1 said anytime I notice much growing. The frets brad (spread out) as well asgroveand the crowning removes the brad and restores the fret to proper width.

Since the compression of the fret makes it more dense, I feel it will wear less leaving it. A level takes off material on frets that don't need it and get you to new material on the frets that were dented and are now not as dense. I may be wrong about this, but a blacksmith will hammer a piece to make it denser/stronger, the string hammering against the fret is similar, so making the groove narrower without lowering it may possibly help the fret to last longer.

[dhergert]

Looking at your frets, crowning and dressing may be all you need at this point. You'll know when your frets are too worn by whether you can make clear notes on them.

But, if you're going to re-fret completely, I'd highly recommend looking into Evo gold frets. My F-9 was re-fretted using these and I've been really happy with the work. I'll have the same done on my main playing banjos when the time comes.

Evo frets are a copper alloy (with no nickel) and possess a Vicker's hardness of HV5/250 compared to nickle silver at HV5/200 and stainless at HV5/300. Evo frets can be worked with standard fret tools. I find the tone brightness match with Evo frets to be nearly the same as a bone nut, so there's not a huge difference in sound from open strings to fretted strings.

Also from personal experience, even on a neck as short as a mandolin, leveling the fingerboard before re-fretting makes a real playing improvement.

[pelone]

Russ---I am checking out your favored chord selection. Do you tend to play in the key of G?

[Ivan Kelsall]

Russ - The frets on both my Weber & Lebeda mandolins look just the same as the ones in your pic.,but both mandolins play perfectly well. When they don't,they'll be re-fretted,but not before - as you guys say - "If it ain't broke .....!",
Ivan

[AlanN]

And I would suggest going with EVO or stainless steel for the next re-fret. I'm 2.5 years into my EVO wire and there is nary a mark on any fret. The previous fret job lasted < 1 year, on wire that looked like the pic above.

[Russ Donahue]

Russ---I am checking out your favored chord selection. Do you tend to play in the key of G?

Ayuh...its also the key where my playing partners are most comfortable to sing.

[Drew Egerton]

Thanks for the thread with pic. When trying to read up on this before to decide how bad mine were, it was hard to find a discussion with pics. I started worrying about it around the same level of wear as your pic and have played quite a bit for about 6 months since then. It's time for it to be done soon for me now. Will likely get some EVO thrown in there, just a question of how many frets to do if not all of them.

[Paul Busman]

Thanks for posting that picture. I was starting to worry about my instruments' frets which are showing what I thought was a fair amount of wear, although they still play well. Seeing yours makes me feel a lot better about mine.
If your mandolin is still playing OK, I'd say don't fret about it.
(somebody had to say it)

[Mandoplumb]

Since the compression of the fret makes it more dense, I feel it will wear less leaving it. A level takes off material on frets that don't need it and get you to new material on the frets that were dented and are now not as dense. I may be wrong about this, but a blacksmith will hammer a piece to make it denser/stronger, the string hammering against the fret is similar, so making the groove narrower without lowering it may possibly help the fret to last longer.

I don’t know if it will make frets last longer to leave the grove alone, if you don’t try to remove the grove depth wise just bring the fret back to its original width I don’t think it will affect the longevity. But to me it reduces some other problems, intonation, movement of hands on board, etc.

[Willie Poole]

One thing that I have found when frets get worn like these are is that if and when you remove the bridge and then reinstall it if you don`t line it up exactly where it was as far as top to bottom then when you press down on the strings they will slide into the fret grooves and go sharp and the intonation will be off and drive a person crazy trying to figure out what is wrong...I have found this on a few mandolins where I was installing a new bridge with the slots not having exactly the same spaceing as the old bridge had..

I hope I explained this OK, A few folks have brought mandolins to me for a set up and that is all that was wrong with them, I try to make sure the bridge is centered before I do anything else to it...I try not to let my fret grooves get any deeper than these that are shown in the photo, dressing them isn`t all that hard to do if you just take your time...

Willie

Willie

[dhergert]

... It's time for it to be done soon for me now. Will likely get some EVO thrown in there, just a question of how many frets to do if not all of them.

Drew, if you do go with Evo Gold frets for a partial refret, be aware that the Evo Gold frets do really look gold, so they will look different in color than nickle-silver frets. If your tolerance of that kind of visual difference is strong, a partial Evo Gold refret might be ok for you. Otherwise if you really want Evo Gold frets, you may want to do a complete re-fret using them.

There are lots of online references to people's experiences with Evo Gold frets, and comparing them with nickle-silver and stainless steel for longevity. I'm sold on Evo, but I've only had about 6 months of real experience with them.

[Br1ck]

If you leave them alone, soon enough your mandolin will tell you it's time for a level and recrown. You will buzz. This just happened with my Silverangel. I leveled and recrowned the frets with great results. Very rewarding. Recouped the cost of the files easily, with my first fret level, so the last five were free.