Official Luthiers Forum!

Cheater bars would be helpful. It's not a big deal mind you but if I am cutting rather large stainless wire say the ends 48 times in rapid succession I'm happy for my hands to be done with the last several because they start to be rather painful....

Regarding EVO and how it works. It does work very well, cuts easily, scratches are seemingly less tenacious, and it polishes easily and well. If I didn't think that it can sound tinny..... it would be my favorite wire. That gold color is... interesting too.... be sure you like it though before installing...

In case no one has noticed this "sounds tinny" kick that I'm on I am trying to make a point and my point is a bit different than Dave's although he has addressed my point very well too. I'm not asserting that stainless DOES sound tinny or EVO as well but what I am asserting is there is a perception out there that I genuinely share for better or worse that wires other than NS can or might sound tinny. I am very aware that I can't prove it and I am also very aware that I am likely wrong nonetheless this perception is important to understand because if you don't it can ruin your day, your clients too. Fretting an instrument with a wire that the client ends up hating and is even willing to pay again to have it removed is where you don't want to go, ever, everyone loses. FYI we've been there and done that too.... that's why the calculated approach of providing the information but never, never pushing one wire solution over another, let the client make that decision...

One last severed head to toss in someone's lap here and then off to work.... If one is a stickler for spot-on intonation consider the value-add of a CNC slotted fret board. Dave has been doing a study for nearly a decade now on developing a digital footprint of fret board spacing as a forensic method to date and authenticate valuable and not so valuable instruments. It's a study sampling and measuring fret spacing and to date I think he must have 300+ guitars in the data base.

Fret spacing errors are a function of the tooling used and as such these errors are shared by instruments of similar vintage and maker. In Dave's database he has some of mine that had CNC boards and the fret spacing for the CNC guitars is far more accurate than any other samples measured to date. So much more accurate that in some cases the improvement is audible to we humans.

So if the integrity of the crowned fret is important to ya for intonation reasons please also give some thought to fret slotting because that's every bit as important for intonation as the fret itself.

Really?! That is surprising.

I think no on the string wear issue.

On fret wear, I prefer nicely worn in frets on my main squeeze Strat. I'm not sure why.

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Pat

I used regular wire for a long time until I discovered EVO and have not looked back. EVO wears much longer then regular in my experience. Also I find EVO easier to work. Have not used S.S. wire basically based on working stainless as a machinist. As to the color, it's so subtle to me that it does not make a difference.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!