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There is a thread going on in the builders section of the AGF where some folks are saying that the company that makes the EVO alloy has discontinued it. Can anyone here confirm that? Because dang! I was just starting to like this stuff.

I hadn’t heard that. I know StewMac is selling what appears to be a similar wire these days. I’ve also seen ads for Blacksmith’s phosphor bronze fretwire which is gold-ish in colour and also supposedly a harder alloy than nickel silver.

As far as I know, EVO is done. Manufacturers couldn’t get certain necessary metals to make it.

Lots of folks are saying Stew Mac Gold is a decent replacement…

I've been watching that AGF thread too. So, I sent a message straight to the horse's mouth to ask if it's no longer available and haven't heard back yet from Jescar. Their product page for the size of fretwire I use just says that the "by the pound coiled" form is out of stock and gives no indication that it's no longer available. The do have it 2-foot straight lengths, but it's much more expensive than coiled and I don't want to waste time futzing around with bending the fretwire.

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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 haven't heard this and wonder too. Some Martin models have used it, had one last week on my bench. I'm bringing this up because Jescar will have much more motivation to continue to produce it if a major manufacturer is using it in production.

Has anyone seen the stumac or blacksmith in person? From the pictures anyways the SM looks a lot more gold colored than Evo.

Pat

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Pat

OH I didn't know that Martin actually used it. Apparently it was made in Belarus so for obvious reasons that could be the problem. But yeah if big companies like Martin start to use it then it could push it back into production.

What a bummer.

I just assumed that SM gold was actually EVO rebranded but perhaps not.

According to Jescar's Instagram page: "Don't be tricked by fool's gold! If it's not Jescar, it's not EVO."

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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 bought 100' of the next size smaller (0.080 x 0.037"). I normally used the 80 by 47 but couldn't find a supplier that was in stock.

Have never seen any in person. Guess it's not important.

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

Just read StewMac's site about their "gold wire" and they say it's similar to Jescar EVO which confirms what Pat said above that it's not Jescar.

Couple of things which may rub some the wrong way so be it.

I'm not a fan of EVO and here's why: I'm not a fan of gold on a guitar period and EVO is very gold when polished up. It also tarnishes more so than nickel silver in my experience with it. I've fretted many guitars with it and like working with it though. It files very well, polishes great and I like the way it cuts too and it doesn't hurt my hands like stainless can.

FYI Dave Collins built a rig to test fret wire for wear and hardness. I've mentioned this before. He made dozens of mini fret boards and then fretted them with NS, EVO and Stainless. He may have used some Dunlap too even though we hate it.... Sorry to you old timers who are die hard Dunlap fans it works like poop and feels rubbery.

Anyway the rig is a sewing machine with modifications that frets a string on the various wires over and over and over again and he integrated a counter too. After tens of thousands of fretting iterations he found that EVO is very nearly as hard as stainless and that includes wear resistant also. We were surprised and had thought that EVO was harder than NS but not as hard as stainless but it's very nearly just as hard as stainless.

Now this introduces another issue where a goodly part of the playing world may react to stainless as "tinny sounding." 12 years or so ago we refretted a Tele for a Nashville A-lister who hated it and offered to pay us double to rip it all out and redo with NS.....

I think that I hear a difference on acoustics and I used it (EVO) on three of my 54.5 guitars with one of them in my living room right now. Others I know don't hear any difference.

Interestingly my Suhr Strat is stainless and compound and I learned to love it so much so that I just took delivery of a Suhr tele with stainless and a compound radius.

So in my mind EVO and stainless are very similar in wear resistance and some may think that we hear a thinness that is not desirable. Could I be nuts about what I hear? Sure it's subjective as all get out.

But one thing remains what EVO looks like a year out from being polished and it's a nasty, dull, dark, corroded look that I don't like at all.

It's also not traditional and if you build instruments in the Martin tradition even though Martin did use some EVO on some models it's not very Martinesque.

Lastly StewMac's wire is not the same alloy as Jescar EVO was and I remember Jescar telling us they has some titanium in their EVO which explains why it competes with stainless for actual hardness.

I bet that JF is right too about the Ukraine war perhaps being why Jescare can't get more right now.

Glad I got a roll of EVO from Jescar last year. Should last me. I do like the look of NS but prefer the wear characteristics of EVO. Scotchbrite then Howard’s when I restring keeps everything looking good. As far as looks go I use EVO on acoustics where it just tends to blend in with phosphor bronze strings. I normally refret electrics with NS.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

We used the Jescar-sourced EVO wire primarily for conversion of fretted instruments for those alergic to nickel. Acoustics were fairly easy and a Strat was a major project, as stainless may or may not be nickel-free, depending on alloy and where all the bits were sourced (lower-end stainless hardware is a roll of the dice on nickel contents, so every component of a hardware package has to be tested). We've since determined that Jescar's stainless is consistently nickel-free in several sizes, so have substituted that for the EVO.

While what the boys called an initial flood of EVO wire use did occur at the onset of that's wire's entry to the market, when I was there, we did a lot of stainless and nickel, and very little EVO. It may be that this was one of those 'all the other kids are doing it, Mon....pulleeze?' things that we see in luthiery (aka, the 'AGF-Standard guitar' which was a small jumbo with specific features and gold Gotoh 510 tuners, etc.), or just the reality of the corrosion issue mentioned. When I left my formal arrangement there, we were still doing a few guitars every now and again for one player, and those in the shop saw that work as punishment duty.

On hardness, EVO is close to the mid-point between nickel silver and stainless, but at Greenridge, we were more concerned with the strings used versus fret material, with stainless bass string sets being the worst for wear on 4 and 5 string basses. For one ex-'80's California ex-punker and later ex-grunge player, EVO wire tripled the time between level/crown/polish and refret, while stainless frets have apparently tripled the time between refrets over EVO, as we heard from, but seldom saw him back for fretwork.

This move from nickel to EVO to stainless was noted at Greenridge, with the usual nonsensical aversion to stainless yielding to fiscal realities when for most touring players, nickel was a constant maintenance item, EVO bumped up the time between major fret work, and stainless was effectively a career-long solution.

We could get into the politics of sourcing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the net is that most raw and somewhat refined materials that can be put into a cargo hold or shipping container (versus transported under pressure/need constant refrigeration) in a global world are priced based on the last 2-3 percent of supply, so European manufacturers of all those wonderful things we depend upon (luxury German automobiles; paints, varnishes and other surface coatings; Airbus aircraft) chew through available supply of precursors or materials like aluminum, titanium, and 3K surface coatings originally sourced from the Russian sphere pretty quickly, depending on secondary sources to back-fill demand, thus pushing costs up to the point where minor manufacturers shut down those portions of their product line dependent on that last few percent of scarce, very expensive materials.

Now that the Russian leadership appears to have elected to move towards becoming a Chinese satrophy, thus allowing the current regime in Moscow to stay in power for a few more months/years, I do not see any improvement in store for things like EVO wire or titanium alloy hardware sets. Stainless is pretty easy to find, so that will be the ongoing substitute for most EVO wire, with most luthiers I know leery of the brand X substitute for at least a few years more of feedback on the stuff. With Russian gas unavailable to Europe, but the US LNG and Norwegian gas supply in the market growing, I am hopeful that we do not see more disruptions in the natural gas-tied chemical and coatings market.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

That sounds like a brilliant testing rig there Hesh and thanks for sharing the results. I put off using Evo for years because of the gold color but after I started using it, it just stopped bothering me. Some of these big corn fed boys here in blue grass country will break your hand in a meeting hand shake and I remember having to refret the cowboy chord frets for one literally every year. Stainless on an acoustic is a no no for me too because of the 'ping' but I didn't notice it with Evo.

I have and have some guitars out there in the wild with the SM cryo-wire but have no idea if that really is harder yet. On paper it does make sense that it could be though.

This is the comment on the website from NextGen:
DISCONTINUED: The metallurgy company that makes the proprietary EVO alloy used by Jescar to make this fretwire decided to discontinue making it.
Unfortunately, despite a great deal of negotiating from Jescar, and others in the guitar industry, they are sticking to that decision.
As a result, we will no longer be able to get any once we are sold out.

This doesn't match my experience with EVO wire at all. The EVO frets on octave mandolin that I built over a year ago and have been playing as my main instrument over that whole time look great. Zero corrosion and still shiny.

Before I first used EVO, I was concerned about the gold color and that it might look to flashy, but it turned out to be a pretty subtle color. It doesn't stand out at all the way gold tuners do. So, I'm good with it. And I'm not worried about building traditional instruments so that helps.

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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

Agreed Jay, was just looking at a guitar I built 10 years ago with EVO and they are as shiny as the day I installed them. The colour is not so obvious.
I have done re-frets with these on guitars that see a lot of pro usage and there is literally no wear after years of hard playing.
I will be sad to see them disappear...

I wonder if certain people that leach acid from their skin has anything to do with it?

Yep, Most of my customer’s EVO frets look great, but I have one whose frets look horrible. It doesn’t seem to have affected their longevity, at least not by the last time I saw the guitar a couple of years ago. I had started relatively few years ago using EVO frets on all of my guitars figuring it was easy added value to put off refrets for a few years (every now and then one of my customers would come back for a refret on a guitar I had built). I like EVO. I will miss it when I use up my stock.

I tried Stainless Steel, but the little ping on each note kept me from using it on any more guitars after the trial one. The purchaser didn’t notice the ping.

This Heshtone had its strings changed 4 months ago since it gets a lot of playing over here. When I change strings I always clean up the fretboard and frets that means hitting them with OOOO steel wool.

When EVO is first polished up (no matter what you use if it does a good job) it loses much of the gold color or at least the deeper tones of gold and it does have a high shine.

Here is one of mine living in 45% RH continually except for a 4 day power failure last month. You can see the darker gold coming though, the shine is mostly gone and looks dull. The Martin that I worked on a week or two ago with EVO the frets were completely dull no luster or shine to them at all and a dull copper/gold color. They were so dull they looked like uranium only with less of the yellow color.

This is very much a personal preference thing for me I simply do not like the color of this fret wire shined up or dulled down in time. You are also up against tradition which is a powerful thing in our trade regardless of the bubble that forums can represent at times.

Lastly in support of my nod this evening to tradition I'll post a dreadn*ught that I built with a black top

Me too, always a consideration in the commercial world.

I would imagine that some people gunk more than others with any fretwire.

FWIW, people that have been happy with EVO are also posting about being happy with StewMac Gold, so maybe worth a gander.

But that is not what I'm observing or posting pics of Ed. The guitar pictured the fret wire tarnished in four months uniformly all over the neck even where it is not played by human hands.

EVO tarnishes and loses it's luster in time regardless of if anyone played the instrument and that is what I don't like about it the tarnishing seems to be much more noticeable than with NS or stainless wire. And unlike NS and stainless when EVO tarnishes it also changes color noticeably.

So even if this has not been your experience with EVO, speaking to everyone here, it may be in time, stay tuned.

Went back in my photo history, I take pics of every guitar I repair for a number of reasons. The Martin I referenced with EVO was about two weeks ago so I found the pics of the OO-28 with factory EVO.

The color was very corroded and dull and looked terrible.

This is not a reaction to someone's body chemistry the wire simply corrodes and it's visually noticeable and that's the complaint here from me. This is common, we see it on everything with EVO on it which is not very much mind you.

NS and stainless corrode too but not nearly as fast and it's not as noticeable.

I'll repeat that the wire is very nice to work with, hard as heck rivaling stainless and I like how it cuts and polishing it is a joy since it responds well to polishing. But then there is this how it looks with no attention for 6 months or so and now that it's discontinued we will likely never use our's again since we can't replace it in time reliably. Serviceability for repair shops suggests that anything we install that may need partial replacement in time needs to not have sourcing problems...... No single points of supply chain failure.

Again pics are unretouched and only reduced to be under 200K.

Looking at my black dread and the OO-18 you can see the progression in the tarnishing too. Mine in 4 months is 50% or so on the way to looking like the Martin.