Official Luthiers Forum!

I have a newer Gibson Double Cut Les Paul on the bench that had jumbo frets on it about .055 tall. The client wanted them reduced to .035 tall with the tops flattened a bit. I broke out my tools and commenced. My trusty old StewMac files barely touched them. I thought maybe they were stainless, but that file tends to make a screaming sound when cutting stainless. No screaming with these. Switched to a diamond plate, and didn't do much better. Finally resorted to 120 grit red aluminum oxide belts on my Donnell Sanding Plane. All they did was polish out the scratches left by the diamond plate. The frets are all .050 tall now, with a flat spot on the top of the frets. Hell of a burr on them, too. Used my StewMac 3 cornered file to take the burr off, but even that file had trouble taking off the burrs. It's like the fret material is work hardening, which I've only seen on bell brass and some exotics like Inconel and Waspalloy.

So my question is - was Gibson experimenting with cryogenically treated fretwire recently? I know someone was - I remember reading about it. Any ideas?

If not, I'll just hand polish these frets out using my usual method of multiple grits of sandpapers and call it good.

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

I did some quick research - and lo and behold, Gibson tried some of Jescar's cryogenically treated fretwire a couple years back - but stopped. Why did they stop?

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

Dang, I hope I don't get one of those to work on.

Let us know how it goes.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I think your experience with working these frets could give us the reason why they stopped.

Well, they are done. I got them down to .045 close to the nut tapering up to .050 up by the neck pickup. I used up about twice as much 220 grit sandpaper shaping them and doing the rough polish. They look great now. It's strung up to pitch, and tomorrow I will set the action at both ends before calling it good. Hope the client digs it. This guy has been with me since the late 70's, and I've worked on every guitar he has owned.

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

Got out my Machinery's Handbook and read about cryo treatment of metal. The purpose? To harden the material against premature wear. It also states that the metal is harder to work after being treated, so it should be close to size and shape before cryo treatment. I think that's why Gibson quit using it.

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

Fumblefinger asked me about fret wear on this guitar. It's a 2014 model which my client bought used in 2018 - and he plays it every day. Yet - it showed no fret wear at all, so this cryo treatment works pretty well.

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

I heard that g*bson experimented with them too. My guess is that some people, some people thought that they sounded tinny just like in our experience about half of the players we work with who have expressed opinions on stainless find that tinny sounding too.

Milling down all the frets at the same time is a very hard slog Chris my friend. My Strat had .055's or so on it that came on it and I hated them and like smaller traditional frets. So I thought it would be cool to mill them down to .035". After several hours at it.... it became clear that even nickel silver frets are not easy to take down when you are doing many of them at the same time with a leveling beam or file.

So then I asked our apprentice to have a go at it. He spent two days taking them down to .042 and that's were we quit and chalked it up to a refret would have been less effort. Many thanks again to Link Van Cleave for his help with this back in the day. In hindsight I should have never asked an apprentice to do this, not much learning value here, poor judgement on my part.

Don't know for sure what g*ibson did but fret hardness and desired tone are intertwined for many players.

Yes, when filing or sanding new frets - they are round on top and it doesn't take long to make a flat spot which can then be crowned and polished. You start taking off more than .005 and that fret starts getting pretty wide. Suddenly you are removing a LOT more metal, and it takes a lot more time and effort.

I did about 10 "fretless wonder" jobs for clients here in town, starting with jumbo frets and skinning them down to .025 to .020. Talk about a pain in the hindquarters! It took 3 days of work to get them down, and then even longer to crown the fret. Hard to put a full radius on a fret that is .020 tall when you are using a stainless fret guard that is .010 thick. The best you can do is a .010 radius, leaving the fret almost rectangular in profile. But that's why the old fretless wonder Gibson frets look almost flat.

No more endless grinding of metal for me. When someone wants a fretless wonder job now I order mandolin fretwire that is .036 tall (Dunlop 6130) and pretty narrow. It's much easier to file down to size, but still a cast iron biotch to crown and polish. Using masking tape instead of a stainless fret guard will get you another .003 because the tape measures .007 - but more care is called for.

I was charging triple to grind the jumbos down, but from now on will be refretting with smaller wire - I can charge double and still have work. I am in the middle of doing doing that to some other guitars that thankfully did not have cryogenic frets. Too bad there is not a way to identify these cryo frets before quoting a job.

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

Chris, did you find out what years they were doing this? Only certain models?

Pat

_________________
Pat

Started in 2014 and apparently used them sporadically up to 2018. My guess is their supply got used up.

Let's see what happens in 20 years when used Gibsons show up with perfect frets and the finish worn off. Then people will ask questions, and cryogenically treated fretwire will become the next "must have" from what by then will be vintage lore.

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

I bought a bunch of that cryo wire from Stew Mac and I have not noticed any difference filing them at all so I'm puzzled. Perhaps there are harder cryo wires out there then what SM sells.

Says right in Machinery's Handbook that the material must be close to final size and shape because of the difficulty of working the material after treatment.

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

Germany vs China?

Pat

_________________
Pat

Uh.... what?

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

I'm guessing where the Stewmac version is from.

Pat

_________________
Pat

I thought StewMac was stocking Jescar wire at one time, but a quick check reveals that's no longer the case. It's now StewMac Cryowire.... So you may be correct, Pat.

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

Yeah maybe that is the case then. I kind of thought it was a marking thing till I read a bit about it too. Plus it was only a slight bit more expensive then SM's regular offering. Chris was the Jescar cryo stuff substantially more expensive then the regular wire? That might explain something.

Since I didn't buy any, I wouldn't remember. Jescar is a considered a premium brand by some. I've been using Dunlop since the 80's for most work.

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

Could it be cryo Stainless steel vs. cryo nickel silver?

Possible. I have no idea how to find out.

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