Rosewood Finger Board to Balance Brightness of Stainless Frets ?

[ROBERTKOA]

Well , some think Stainless is a bit brighter, makes sense to me 'cause most people hear a difference in NUT material  ( Brass Vs, Bone VS, Teflon etc.) and the frets become the nut when you fret a note.

I like fat and warm sustainy tones like the Fatter sides of Strat for example. I like the guitar unplugged to be loud ,resonant and thick sounding  and get the " plinkier" sounds when needed using special passive wiring.( NOT Have the whole guitar be "plinky")

I bend a lot and my current Koa body guitar is showing wear on the nickel frets. Maple neck Ebony board H-S-S very resonant .

So IF I try stainless frets  next build , will using a rosewood fingerboard offset ( Balance ) the slight increase in brightness from the Stainless ?

And how do you guys like the Gold EVOs -anyone try em?

Thanks.

 

[koshersteel]

well, the rosewood will be more mellow than the ebony would be. I like to use pickups w/ Anlino II magnets (as opposed to ALNICO V) to balance stainless steel frets as well.

 

[dmraco]

My 1st comment is SS frets do not seem brighter, they do offer more slide and durability.  A little more smooth to play.

All of my SS frets are on rosewood and do not "sound" different that my nickel frets from a tone standpoint.

i wolkd like to try the Gold frets too.

 

[m4rk0]

don't believe anything Ed Roman writes!  :icon_biggrin:

 

[Dan025]

ditto, the shape of the crown is more important.
i have picks made from various metals, if you drop them and listen to the sound it makes the nickel silver and the stainless are indistinguishable from each other, of coarse there are many types of stainless and i don't know what alloys are used in the frets or the picks. aluminum sounds thin brass sounds fuller and titanium sounds a little dead. when playing the differences sound much smaller as there are many parts that make up the tone. i do seem to notice some shrillness when playing with 10's on my strat but i'm not sure that wasn't there before i got a neck with stainless frets.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

I would worry about the pickups.  Lower resistance, lower number of wind pickups will tend to have more jangle and high end to them.  I have never noticed any difference in sound with the stainless frets.  Slightly different feel, impressive resistance to wear.  As far as the wood difference for fret board material, that is a tough one.  While I subscribe to the different wood having tonal differences, and that the fingerboard should be considered, it is a small portion of the overall guitar wood wise.  Still to add more confusion to the conversation, the differences between pieces of wood from the same species of wood seems to have the greatest effect on the sound.  Use the information Warmoth gives you as a guide post towards the type of sound you like and go from there.  That is the best advice I can add.
Patrick

 

[-CB-]

Just my observations....

SS frets are like playing on buttah.  But dont sound any different to me.  Its all feel.  That great smooth as glass feel.

On a maple neck, ebony vs rosewood vs maple is not gonna make a tinkers dam worth of difference.  On another wood, say... goncalo or mahogany, it would make more difference - IMHO - since neither is as inherently stiff as maple to start with.  Thought of another way, maple starts out very stiff, and the stiffness caused by laminating it with a slab of ebony vs rosewood is far less significant than laminating either of thsoe to a less stiff wood, like goncalo or mahogany.

 

[-CB-]

Should add...

Choose stainless for its great feel and next to forever wearing qualities.

Choose the fretboard wood for its looks and feel, at least when doing a maple neck.  You'll get far more tone change on the thickness of the contour than the fretboard wood - IMHO.

 

[Cagey]

I agree with CB. If you've got a maple (or similarly hard wood neck), fingerboard material doesn't have much, if any, impact on tone. Also, in my experience, stainless frets play like silk and wear like diamond but have no effect on tone. To top that off, from someone like Warmoth the adder for SS frets is only $20. That's a no-brainer. It would be foolish to use anything less. The only reason to not do it is if you can't talk them into it because you want binding on your neck. They don't want to put SS or Gold tone frets on bound necks out of fear of damaging the binding with the possible extra working the harder frets might require.