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Shredding: Frets vs Radius

Wizard of Wailing

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    I'm thinking about my next neck.  I have a 9.5 radius neck with vintage frets.  I love the feel of having my fingers right on the fretboard, which the small frets provide me with.  Yet I can't play as fast and bend as easily as I can on my guitars with larger frets which all have a 10-16 compound radius.  I'm wondering how much of my speed is due to the frets, and how much is due to the radius. Does anybody have two necks that both have vintage frets, yet different dimensions?
 
I don't have vintage sized frets, but I find I'm a bit faster on Jumbos than XJs, so if it feels comfortable to you I'd say the small frets won't get in your way. The radius will make an obvious difference when it comes to bending, but I don't notice it affecting my speed at all. Ultimately it comes down to what suits you best. You're bound to get many different opinions here, but only you can really determine what works best for your hands and style

-Rory
 
It's been my experience that the radius has more to do with speed and accuracy than fret size. I've had necks with small, necks with large and necks with jumbo frets. Regardless of fret size, it's the flatter radii that seem to be most comfortable and most conducive to speed for me. As always though, YMMV.
 
I think radius has more to do with bending without fretting out than speed. For speed you just need a good enough setup that the action itself is no longer the limiting factor. Phil Collen plays baseball bats strung with guy wires, but his action is low. 

One could argue that such a setup potentially allows lower action than typical shred platforms.  Some folks say bigger strings need more room to move, but thats only true  because you can smack them harder - theres an whole region of dynamic range thats simply not accessible to lighter strings, but nobody forces you to actually use it if you don't want to, or you need to trade some excursion for lower action height.
 
Joe Satriani, Steve Morse and (currently Eddie van Halen) have all played or now play with frets in the "medium" category - 0.038" - 0.044" when dressed. I don't care for them, but I don't think you can argue from empirical evidence that mediums are "slower" than railroad ties.

Edit: It's easy to see how fret size can really effect the perceived size of the entire neck, but in my opinion, the single biggest interacting issue, and one that receives tragically-minute levels of attention, is:

THE COMPOSITION OF YOUR FINGERTIPS!

Are they hard, are they soft, do they press down around the string to the board, do you want them to, do you form callouses, are they hard, do you sand them, do you have to (a la SRV) superglue them back on.... makes a LOT of difference. I don't even know what my fingertips are made of after 42 years of playing, I have no callouses, and they seem soft, but they never hurt - because I have no feeling in them, pretty-much. I have no fingerprints either, handy for those safe-cracking jobs.
 
StubHead said:
one that receives tragically-minute levels of attention, is:

THE COMPOSITION OF YOUR FINGERTIPS!

Perhaps because, aside from bottles of isocyanoacrylate, you can't really buy new fingertips, and it's equally hard to obsesses / be angst riddled about trying a different set. But the guy wires helps here.
 
The tips of mine are like an old leather boot.
Sometimes they peel.
I was always told that soaking your fingertips in ammonia worked.....
but who's got time for that.
Sand em' and Play hard.
 
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