Myth on SS durability ?

[Unwound G]

This neck is only 3 years old but often played. Can this be true ?

 

[Strat Avenger]

Nope. That's not stainless.

 

[Rick]

Need more facts. Dubious. Has it been brought to a luthier?

 

[mayfly]

Those do not appear to be stainless frets. Is this your neck?

 

[ghostrider25]

I have a hard time believing those are stainless……….. even if you told me it was gigged by a Sasquatch for 20 years.

 

[triple jim]

From experience with my own stainless frets, I can say with confidence that there's no way those are stainless steel frets.

 

[amigarobbo]

The red dot mean satin paint finish, I think.

 

[ruscio]

The flattening is much too uniform, and the divots too deep, for that to be 3 years' worth of SS fret wear.

 

[Unwound G]

I have the same suspicion that it has been refretted with nickel silver wires but great job. The heel says SS6115 so I took it from there. It's a customer's neck and he is also not sure of its history.

 

[TBurst Std]

I tend to agree. The color of the frets is much closer to nickel than SS

 

[Unwound G]

The owner of the neck dug up his invoice when I asked him. Frets are stainless steel apparently.

 

[Rick]

Four things are possible:
1) It never was SS, so test it with copper sulfate. No color change should be SS. Or try to scratch it with a piece of known stainless. Copper sulfate is uesd to clear algae and as a soil amendment.
2) The customer plays the guitar with a vulcan death grip and uses high tension thick steel strings.
3) He did what he was supposed to do, and played the snot out of it.
4) There was intervening fret change

 

[mayfly]

I'm honestly scratching my head on this one. I've got several W necks, some stainless some nickel. The nickel ones look just like that, and the stainless ones look new - even after a decade of play on them.

Dunno man. Seems sketch.

 

[mayfly]

Thinking on this a bit more... The frets are worn out no matter how you look at it. If you are considering purchasing the neck, just deduct the cost of a fret job and put in the frets you want.

Problem solved - no need to dwell on the fret type. Unless you are really driven to get to the bottom of it...

 

[bagman67]

It seems incompatible with the reason folks get stainless frets in the first place, but those divots look as if they could be the result of traumatic impact on the fretboard. Was your guy literally having at that thing with a mallet? Stranger things have happened. My then 2-year-old had a go at my mahogany-bodied Tele with a wee wooden hammer and the dings in the body remain to this day. Obviously SS is harder than mahogany, but I think you take my point.

 

[supertruper1988]

I have seen this type of damage on a guitar that was in a gig bag face down for a long road trip. If your customer is the original owner and is looking for recourse on the frets not being stainless, then he need to contact Warmoth directly and take it from there.

If he bought the neck used then unfortunately, I dont know of a warranty in the guitar world that would cover a second owner.

 

[JohnnyHardtail]

The way the finish is attached to the frets will give a clue whether they were installed by Warmoth. It should be possible to identify if the SS frets were replaced with nickel.

 

[PizzaTheHutt]

The only way I ever managed to get divots in stainless steel frets was to use thick stainless steel strings, and do constant repeated bends on the low strings where the windings start grinding on the frets. Even then the divots weren't as deep as what is pictured. That problem is solved by a fret level and using normal nickel wound strings instead.

 

[triple jim]

The only way I ever managed to get divots in stainless steel frets was to use thick stainless steel strings, and do constant repeated bends on the low strings where the windings start grinding on the frets. Even then the divots weren't as deep as what is pictured. That problem is solved by a fret level and using normal nickel wound strings instead.

When practicing a phrase that has a lot of bending repeatedly, I've sometimes felt the normally glassy smooth feel of stainless start to feel like galling. I stop playing and rub a finger on the fret(s) in question and the glassy smoothness returns. I assume it's the tiny amount of oil on my finger that does the job.

 

[Waraxe]

My 6105s from 2009 do not look like that at all.

I had to have them leveled when my now wife knocked it over only a few months or so after completion. It dented the hell out of the 5th fret, g string area. Since it was leveled in '09, it's been like new.

It's was my number one for a decade and got at least an hour a day average over that span.

If those are truly ss frets, I'd like to shake the hand of the guy who accomplished that.

His grip must be ungodly!