Stainless Steel Frets

[etj92]

The frets on one of my Warmoth necks, ordered and delivered as Stainless Steel 6105s are wearing quite badly, whereas other necks I have with SS frets show virtually no sign of wear. I suspect that the frets are in fact nickel/silver as they are wearing virtually the same as a neck I have that has nickel/silver frets.
Does anyone know a simple way of telling whether frets are stainless steel or nickel/silver?

 

[stubhead]

I just happened to have a SS neck in deshabille state, and a stack of four 1/2" neomagnets reacted to the stainless and not to the nickel silver. It takes a strong magnet, and that'll clamp on to the strings of course.

Are you just maybe playing it a lot? I have never understood this "never wear" thing about stainless frets. I think they wear at about 1/3 the rate of nickel-silver. I had the same thought about my first SS neck, and I realized I'd been playing it four hours a day for a few months.... If they were harder than the strings, they'd break strings and you couldn't level and crown them.

P.S. (Those were the 6105's on my seven-string, which were the frets that convinced me to always get 6100's. Narrow, pointy frets wear fast for the first several thousandths of an inch.)

 

[Updown]

Should be stamped / written on the back of the neck on the butt, as well.

 

[Cagey]

I had the same thought about my first SS neck, and I realized I'd been playing it four hours a day for a few months.... If they were harder than the strings, they'd break strings and you couldn't level and crown them. 

Damn. Are your strings impregnated with diamond dust or something? I can't imagine wearing out nickel-sliver frets in that time frame, let alone stainless. My first stainless-fretted neck is over three years old now, and you can't tell it's ever been played. It's certainly not getting 4 hours a day, but it's not collecting dust, either.

 

[etj92]

I tried the magnet trick, but didn't seem to work, possibly because the magnet I used wasn't strong enough. The wear is definitely not because I play that guitar more than the rest and like Cagey, my 2 other stainless steel fretted necks show negligible signs of wear. They are both 6105s as well.

 

[DustyCat]

I noticed that Lace offers their Alumitone pickups in a variety of colors, red for example. (This option supposedly runs the bill up another $200)

Basically...do frets come in other colors beside the metal their are made out of?

I think black frets should be added to the list of standard options just the same as chrome/ss/gold etc. All thje other colors would be a bonus.

 

[line6man]

I noticed that Lace offers their Alumitone pickups in a variety of colors, red for example. (This option supposedly runs the bill up another $200)

Basically...do frets come in other colors beside the metal their are made out of?

I think black frets should be added to the list of standard options just the same as chrome/ss/gold etc. All thje other colors would be a bonus.

Warmoth's gold frets are gold because the material they are made from is that color all the way through.
If you want black frets, you would have to plate something, and the plating will wear off in no time at all. It would look terrible.

 

[Cagey]

Basically...do frets come in other colors beside the metal their are made out of?

I've never seen it.

Aluminum parts are easily colored by anodizing them and then dying them. It's actually not the aluminum that gets colored, it's the layer of aluminum oxide that the anodization process forms. A freshly anodized part won't have a color to it.

In any event, with frets you have to consider wear, so any kind of surface treatment isn't going to last very long.

 

[DustyCat]

Copper Frets?

 

[bagman67]

Copper's kinda soft, and oxidizes to an ugly green, but it would look AWESOME when shiny and new.

 

[line6man]

Copper's kinda soft, and oxidizes to an ugly green, but it would look AWESOME when shiny and new.

Would it really be all that different from gold frets, from an aesthetic point of view?

Indeed copper is WAY too soft to make frets out of. I believe Warwick used to do brass fretwire, though.

 

[Cagey]

Copper has somewhat of a reddish tint to it - that's where "Rose Gold" comes from - but you're right - there probably wouldn't be enough difference to justify whatever you had to do to make it viable. Besides, the gold frets are part copper. That's where they get their color from. It's an alloy of copper, iron and titanium. The copper gives it color, the iron gives it hardness, and the titanium gives it anti-oxidant and slippery fine finish qualities.

 

[Hobosaur]

Jack White's band played a show with guitars with copper frets. They wore out after one show. He said it sounded amazing though...