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Just saw Titanium Fretwire on Madinter http://www.madinter.com/accessories/fret-wire/titanium-fretwire-bar-2-1mm.html
Experience/opinions?

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Don't quote me but I seem to remember titanium being part of the alloy used for Jescar's EVO. The link doesn't seem to work or I just can't read the language but their fret wire section shows pics of what could be Jescar EVO.

If this is what they mean by titanium YES, EVO is great stuff. It works very well, cuts nicely, polishes very nicely, wears much better than NS (meaning very little wear) and nearly as good as SS.

Dave has been doing a multi year study of the various types of fret wire and EVO is turning out to be nearly as long lasting as Stainless.

By the way we have several clients who wear out stainless in 8 months.....

You have to click on the flag at the top of the page and go to "English"
I'm familiar with Evo, used it on several gutars and refrets, but this didn't appear to be a gold colour. The brass and bronze wire wire pictures do.
Madinter are Sintoms dealers,and I have found other titanium wire (wider) by Sintoms advertised elsewhere.
They don't seem to stock any jescar wire.

Dimensions are given as
B: 2.06 mm
E: 1.09 mm
A: 2.49 mm
D: 0.42 mm
So although crown width and height are the same, tang depth and width given as different to Jescar Fret Wire 43080, but I suppose it's possible.
P.S. love Evo wire. One of my clients reports no wear after more than a year, when before he badly needed a refret after 6 months.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Thanks Colin, yes this looks different from EVO and likely pretty cool stuff! I can see the titanium color in it too in the pic that you posted.

Forgive me please but I really do think like this..... As such when reentering the atmosphere not unlike the killer guitar solo in Blind Faith's "Presence of the Lord" this fret wire may not heat up as much......

Sorry, couldn't resist but titanium would make excellent fret wire if the price is not excessive AND be lighter in weight too which can be a very desirable quality in musical instruments. It's got a nice gleam to it too. Very cool.

By the way in the states there is an on going debate as to if harder wire, stainless and even EVO results in a tinny sounding instrument. It may be like A432 and utter BS but some of us (me included.....) have experienced the impression with particularly acoustic instruments that stainless can sound a bit..... cheap.... and tinny. Dave thinks I'm nuts but I'm not alone. Lots of folks are nuts and we have a client who is a professional, A-list recording star who we refretted his Tele with stainless and he was back in two days wanting it ripped out and replaced with NS.

I took a blind listening test with an electric with some stainless and some NS and I could not point out what wire was what. But this was an electric mind you and I still believe that acoustics are where some of us perceive a difference more easily.

Anyway it could be interesting to see if this wire because of it's hardness suffers rightly or wrongly from impressions that harder wire sounds like crap. Subjective I know but we hear this from players at times too.

I'm starting to believe in this, myself. I started putting stainless on my last few acoustic builds. I have noticed a definite pingy-ness (a word?) in the way they sound and even feel. I was playing my latest last night and was having a hard time getting over the pings, especially on slides or if I didn't fret the note really solidly. Almost had a resonator sound to it. I also noticed some lacquer cracks in the new finish (grrrr! But that's another topic), so I'm going to have to refinish this one regardless. At the same time I will refret with NS or possibly EVO. That way I will get a before and after with the same guitar. Not scientific, but certainly instructive.

-Tony

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Tony Thatcher
Bozeman, Montana

Perhaps we should be asking ourselves which metals are musical? We know brass is musical.... look at any horn section. Heck, one particular alloy of brass is bell brass.... used for making.... bells (natch!). Silver? Flutes. What are the bars on vibraphones made from? Aluminum. T6 or aircraft grade is very musical. Titanium? Not so much, and expensive to boot (makes great airplane or racecar parts). Cast iron? Yes - big stuff like pianos, but it's not producing the musical sound. Zinc - yes. Fender used it for sustain blocks on their whammys for awhile. Steel - of course. Cheap, easily formed, makes great parts for musical instruments.... AND, (drum roll, please) guitar strings!

Inconel? Waspaloy? Lead? Copper? Anything else?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I don't know.
I'm about ready to donate my nickel wire to Luthiers without borders or something. It's getting dusty.
Every once in awhile someone insists on nickel for some hidden mojo they believe in or I need a certain size, unavailable in hard stuff, but most customers seem more than happy skipping the price of a re-fret again anytime soon.

I can't understand why one of the biggies hasn't made the jump. It's potentially adding $400+ in value to an instrument for a tiny change in cost. I would think a small sales effort could explain the math to customers and grab a bunch of consumers on the fence about what to buy.

According to LMI, the EVO wire composition is CuSn15Fe1Ti0.1 so titanium is in the mix. Assuming that the photo above is color then the copper that's in the EVO must be missing from the Madinter wire.

I haven't used EVO because I was put off by the idea of gold frets, thinking it would look too flashy. I was just looking at photos of guitars with EVO frets and maybe it wouldn't be over the top after all.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

It might make an interesting experiment to fret a single neck with several (in an alternating fashion or something like that) different alloys of fretwire and see if you can hear the difference. That would eliminate different necks or guitars influencing the sound.

BTW, I love EVO fretwire and have used it exclusively on the last 6 of my builds. I tend to finish my instruments with a vintage/subtle honey color anyway, so I think it's a pleasing combo.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

That is a GREAT idea, I love it.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Hey Steve you can get here in 5.5 hours because we have a guitar fretted with stainless and NS and no one knows but Dave which is which. It's an electric and I failed the blind playing test...... But I still think that the difference is more profound with acoustics where the energy is not a volume knob....

Hope you are doing great too!

Chris you are welcome too. Maybe we should stick this guitar in the mail to a few people and have others conduct the same regime of blind playing tests?

I felt the same way about the color but when polished the gold tone is very subtle and muted. I used the wire, EVO on 11 instruments that I built and my performer/customers really like it. Only one shows any sign of wear but he also drools beer in his sound hole so he's not exactly a bastion of care for the instrument.....

It cuts, files and polishes very, very well, better than NS in my opinion.

I've got EVO on my daily player. It's on stage every week and a lot of players have come over to check it out. They sure do like the action but not one has ever said anything aobut the fretwire - I don't think they notice it.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Hesh-
The parlor that I brought to your set-up clinic got EVO fret-wire. I like it. The strings glide effortlessly when I’m playing Van Halen. Looks great to me. I finally ordered a roll of it. Eager to put it to use. This thread reminds me of the argument about nitro versus the plastic and vinyl based finishes. I’m re- finishing one of my builds currently and was toying with the idea of re-fretting it with EVO. After reading this I will, and pay attention to the change (if any) in its voice.

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"It is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he has been fooled"
Mark Twain

I wonder how that titanium fretwire is on tools.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

Hey Steve!

You know it may be that the best measure of excellent fret wire is never being noticed.

Hey David:

That's a sweet little guitar and it sounded great too! Hope you are doing great my friend!

I'll throw this out for discussion too since it's related.

For our stainless clients who have death grips and wear out their stainless in 6 - 8 months..... we've gone to doing partial refrets over fret dresses for the obvious reasons. The wire is so very hard that leveling and crowning it takes way more time and effort than replacing it and doing the minor amount of leveling and crowning that once the fret board has been trued up with a full refret requires. Other wise we are not fans of partial refrets because we want the opportunity to.... finish the original manufacturing of the thing and shape the fret board properly.....

The vast majority of necks that we see simply suck. The relief is wrong and often reversed with more on the treble side, fall away is non-existent and instead we often see a ski ramp... or the dreaded body hump for too shallow a grave....(sorry, so I can be overly dramatic at times... ).

Anyway for very hard wire partial refrets are something that we've moved to recently and it's working well for us. Fret wire costs mouse nuts anyway in comparison to the "opportunity costs" for a busy shop with other jobs to do and bill.

Watch what you do with the dust from titanium frets... it's got magnesium in it, and it burns hot and bright.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I have been meaning to trundle up your way and pay you all a visit, Hesh. Now I have lots of reasons (at least 21 or so).

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

The properties of titanium alloys vary greatly.. Some are mushy like metal chewing gum and wear like aluminum... Some perform more like steel.. I would hope that this fretwire manufacturer didn't choose the former...

Opinion wise - I suppose I don't see why titanium would be more desirable than anything else out there... Stainless frets last about forever... NS frets are traditional and easy to work.. Frets don't generally have a rust problem.. Etc...

The weight of all the frets together is less than 1/2 ounce.. Save half It maybe nets you 6 or 7 grams on the neck - which makes up half the weight of the guitar...

Maybe they are awesome... I don't know - I have never tried them ..

I guess I haven't been doing it long enough to have someone come back for a re-fret of stainless. 6-8 months is impressive! I'd worry about the body of a customer like that.

It might be sacrilegous but I sometimes do a lift-plane-and replacement of the same frets on the sound hole end.
Sometimes a re-fret or "press and dress" is out of the question and the frets are either not tall enough from 12 on up to take out a rise or they'r huge and recrowning after filing off .020" will take forever.
It's a specific case. If playability can be improved dramatically if they are lowered, I carefully pull them, keep them in order, plane out the hump or rise, put them back in, and wick in thin CA to keep them down. I'll even skip the dress or just hit fallaway above the 12th. The frets go back in and the ends all line right back up and now I can lower the saddle and make life better at a low cost. This is one place where having a small plane and the skill to use it with certainty helps . A small plane knocks a hump down in a heartbeat where sanding would take forever.

Another lift, plane, replace situation is on Martins with Richlite boards and the neck block that doesn't go to the back.
The ones I see, tend to have a huge swoop up at the nut and a wicked hump over the body, and a truss rod that isn't doing the job, among other things. Sanding that stuff is no fun and makes my shop smell like a tire factory. Even if the frets are not worn, I'll pull just the frets at the humps, chop them down with a small plane and put them back in. I think it makes more sense than filing them thin as tinfoil in a fret dress.

Speaking of weak necks and alternate fret material, wire is often not exactly as the specs would indicate. You can use that to your advantage. My current roll of 37x80 EVO wire has a barb that's a full .005" wider than the Stainless roll I have. Maybe the different materials come through the dies differently. It's useful info when trying to give someone wire they want while helping a redlining truss rod at the same time.

I found some photos of a lift, plane, and replace.