Fret wear and dull knife blades - possible solution?

[JMR]

I just ask you experts an opinion about fret wear and problems with floating bridges. As far as I know wearing of frets and knife blades generates all sorts of problems. How if frets and knife blades could be coated with very hard material - diamond. I know person able of coating metal surfaces with thin layers of diamond. Method is relatively cheap and could be used to enhance top of the line guitars. Coating is extremely hard and lasts forever. Only problem is that coated surfaces can not be bended - possible problem for installing coated frets. How much for example stainless stell jumbo frets need to be bended when installed? Or is it bend at all?

[Paul Secondino]

I dont think diamond coatings are practical for guitars,especially frets.Frtes need ot be hard but at the same time machineable and super smooth.I have never felt a diamond coated anything that was smooth enough to be used as fret material.Stainless steel frets are the hardest frets available at the moment..You can go to Warmoth's wwebsite to check it out

[JMR]

Actually diamond coated surfaces are extremely smooth. We have proved in our research work that two coated diamond surfaces are nearly frictioneless. You cannot get any smoother surface than that.

[toshiro]

How doe this work anyway? Diamond coat? Any facets would make it worthless, as they would cut the string..

Frets need to be bent, either by hand, or using a fret-press, to the radius of the fretboard.. That as we know, varies by guitar.. hehe

[littlegreenman]

from someone who has worked in the machining industry, and dealt with alot of tooling that has diamond coating, I know it is fabulous, I also know it would not help with the knife edges, the diamond coating may not wear quickly, but the dulling of the edge is a product of the metal moving more than wearing. The diamond coating would not last on an edge for long. Also, the posts wear as fast or faster than the knife edge.

As for frets, coating the fret would be pointless as a nickel fret is still soft, and will still ding as easily, THEN, should you ding a fret, your local luthier would curse you, plus the diamond coating really isn't effective on a soft metal, diamond coating is used on tool steels primarily

[darren wilson]

Originally Posted by toshiro

How doe this work anyway? Diamond coat? Any facets would make it worthless, as they would cut the string..

Facets? You know those are cut into the gem stones, right? I don't think he's talking about diamon-encrusted frets.

JMR: Can you explain a bit more about the diamond-coating process? The only way i can see it working for frets is if the frets are pre-cut and pre-bent to a specific radius, which would be impractical as an aftermarket replacement product for all guitars, but may work in a situation where you're making them to order.

Even still, if you've got a super-hard surface like that, how do you level the frets to get the playing surface even? You need to have some ability to work on the fret crowns.

[JMR]

Coating is made by patented technique from graphite. Coated surface can be adjusted to have either very much friction or super smooth nerly frictionless. Thickness of the coating can be adjusted also and it can be less than 1 micrometer thick. I suppose the best case would be coated stainless steel frets. I also think that fret should be pre-cut and pre-bend. The problem arises if frets should be leveled after instalation. Coated surface is impossible to sand down so it might ruin the idea.

[darren wilson]

Stainless frets are already much harder than most guitar strings, so i doubt there'd be much benefit to adding an even harder coating on them.

Really interesting idea, though.

[BZ Beetle]

uhhh.........wouldnt hard frets wear strings through fast? I thought that was why stainless frets arent that popular

[Reaper]

I don't think they do. The main reason, I think, is because stainless steel is harder to bend, and therefore, harder to fret a guitar with.

[BZ Beetle]

we went over the topic in detail on the fender forum a LONG ways back. we collectively came to the conclusion that the reason why they dont put stainless frets on all guitars is because they would eat the strings, where as softer frets would wear faster. *shrugs* im sure theres a plethora of reasons