Have you had a refret to stainless and did it change the sound at all?

[Jimbilly]

I had a lower price guitar recently with stainless frets, it sounded a bit 'jangly' and maybe a bit bright?  A friend is going to get a refret on his wonderful sounding Larrivee acoustic and considering stainless frets because this guitar gets a lot of use, but messing with the tone is not something he wants to do.  

 

[The Shark]

Just now, Jimbilly said:

I had a lower price guitar recently with stainless frets, it sounded a bit 'jangly' and maybe a bit bright?  A friend is going to get a refret on his wonderful sounding Larrivee acoustic and considering stainless frets because this guitar gets a lot of use, but messing with the tone is not something he wants to do.  

 

I hate stainless frets.  They do sound different.  Brighter...

 

[HSB0531]

8 minutes ago, Jimbilly said:

I had a lower price guitar recently with stainless frets, it sounded a bit 'jangly' and maybe a bit bright?  A friend is going to get a refret on his wonderful sounding Larrivee acoustic and considering stainless frets because this guitar gets a lot of use, but messing with the tone is not something he wants to do.  

 

Yep...re-fretting with Stainless always gives a harder edge sound.....😉

[murkat]

Stainless will have a bright, “ting” tone.

[HSB0531]

16 hours ago, murkat said:

Stainless will have a bright, “ting” tone.

You know when I made my comment I was joking about a "harder edge sound", but it turns out I guess it's true!

Edited March 12, 2025 by HSB0531

[Jimbilly]

I'm guessing it might give an acoustic a more Taylor-ish sound, which is desirable to many, and should be easy to "tone down"?

The Eart headless I got on the weekend has them, so I've had two low price guitars with ss frets now, so smooth, and a little 'bright' sounding

I think I would like them on most basses

[Jakeboy]

When I had my Korina Artist refretted  I went with SS and just love them. Yes, a touch more zing or “ting” lol, but that is easy for me to dial out. When my Ultimate needs a refret I’ll go SS…..heck I’ll go stainless on all guitar regrets going forward. They play so easy and will outlast my sorry ass….

[hamerican gigolo]

They are controversial in the guitar world. EVH thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. Tomo Fujita, the great guitarist & teacher, absolutely despises them. 

[tbonesullivan]

I have had guitars with SS frets, and I think I have some now, probably some EBMM guitars, who have gone way into SS frets for most of their models. Some love them, some hate them, and some don't care. Do they make a sound difference? Yes, of course they do. Bridge material makes a difference, so why wouldn't fret material? Honestly I have never understood why people are SO OBSESSED with NUT material, when it's only in play when the string is open.

Anyway, the best way to describe SS frets is that they always feel like freshly polished NS frets. They never get that resistance to bending that NS frets do as they oxidize. Some like this. Some hate this. I personally don't really care. I also don't hold with the "conspiracy theories" about techs not wanting to work with them because they will put them out of business. They are harder, so they wear on tools more, so of course they are going to cost more to install. They are also MUCH less forgiving of imperfections in the fretboard. For companies like Kiesel and others that have precision diamond ground fretboards, getting them to stay is easy. Otherwise, they can pull up. I know that EBMM uses CA glue at the ends of all the frets when doing SS, and even then they sometimes can start to pull up as the metal memory comes into play.