Official Luthiers Forum!

Next Gen is OOS and I'm really hoping to find some ASAP...

I always get mine at Philadelphia Luthier.
https://www.philadelphialuthiertools.co ... -radiused/

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Tony Thatcher
Bozeman, Montana

Hey, thanks for that! Problem solved...

Do you find an advantage to buying sets of pre-cut fret wire vs coiled lengths of fret wire? Is it something like faster installation?

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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

I just find the pre-cut pre-radiused wire extremely convenient. More waste, but I don't need to bend it to a radius. And I can keep the little zip lock baggies stashed in my little fishing lure boxes.

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Tony Thatcher
Bozeman, Montana

I cannot wait until I can afford to put in another order for the precut lengths i used to have, frets 1-22 all cut to length, with the ends undercut and ready to install. No fret tang nipping and filing required. Fretters paradise! I know it only takes 20 minutes to cut, nibble, and file, but...life's better when you don't need to, lol.

As for the EVO, it just comes that way...

This isn't cut to length with overhangs already in. Just a pack pre bent and cut long enough to work. These just happened to be sitting on my bench.

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Tony Thatcher
Bozeman, Montana

I've only ever bought EVO in rolled up wire before. Are you saying you buy it in cut and arched lengths so accurately that you can just install without much filing?

Not with EVO, no, but you could likely get Jescar to do it.

But my general fretting life has been exactly that. Frets 1-22 cut to specific length with the tangs nibbed, ready to pick up and hammer. Which makes having to do it manually feel like a real burning of the mortal coil…1-22 to account for 1 3/4,vs 1 11/16…1-20 for 1 11/16, 2-22/ for 1 3/4..

We purchase from Jester direct in large rolls and buy by the pound. The natural radius of the wire as it comes on the rolls is perfect to use as is so we never are using our two fret wire radius tools. The last time I ordered I believe we have over 24 different sizes or metal types of fret wire in stock at all times.

When we fret the cut end of a roll is held up to the fret board and then cut the wire to length plus 3/8th" or so at this time and then put each now cut wire in a wooden block we both have that has numbers that corresponds to a specific fret slot. It's fast like an assembly line cutting to size and moving to the next one and so on and so forth.

But what I wanted to add here the most is the idea that we fret directly from the spool to the fret board and find the spool's natural radius perfect for what we do. Once in a while with stainless the radius of the spool is not close enough and stainless as you know does not wish to submit to what we want.... so we may run that through our radius rollers to get it closer to the fret board radius. We also always slightly over radius if we have to radius at all to help the ends stay down.

That's the way I do it too, right off the spool. They are slightly over arched which is perfect.

Same.

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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

Bound fingerboards do take longer for sure. One of the only steps I do that I consider superfluous, but I just can't stand how unbound fb's look on acoustics...

Me too, I've been using Andy Birko's Faux Bound fingerboards and like them a lot.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I used to hate doing bound fretboards. I never heard anything great about nibblers, so I used an endcutter ground flush and a file.
A few years back, i was ordering a few pounds of fretwire from Jecar and got one of their tools for tang removal. I got to say, it was a revelation. Fast, easy and no filing. If I was doing a lot of refrets, it would pay for itself in time saved pretty fast. As is, it saves me time and aggravation.

Jescar has them. I just ordered a lb of the 43x80 EVO from them and they had the individual sets too. Assuming, of course, they don't come back and say they're out of stock.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Have a link to such a thing? My nippers require me to file each end… which I’ve always just considered something I had to do… but I wouldn’t mind NIT doing that:)


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Thanks for this I'll take a look. We are currently replacing and augmenting some of our tools using our business windfall (we have been booked solid all year and are turning away around 50% of what comes our way) to reinvest in tooling. We use and have two of the StewMac tang nippers that never work very well in my experience. I can make them work but I have to file the stub of the tang to get it nice and flat. It's only several swipes of the flat side of my half round file but it adds up.

We tune up these tools flattening the table and regrinding the angle on the cutter and can make them work like new but even when new they never worked all that great.

Good lead, thank you!

Just went to the Jescer site and the tang nipper looks great and I was going to order one with tables 1 and 2 but they are out of stock. They are out of stock of all of them with any table combo, bummer I wanted one or two of these.

Sorry Snow, I'm not good with those kind of things, but if you go to their website, there's all kinds of great stuff besides fretwire.