1
Fret Condition
Over the years, as an instrument is played the frets wear down. This is often seen on the first few frets and buzzing frequently occurs first down on the nut. The solution is often a partial re-fret. A low fret followed by a high fret will buzz.
Fret wire is an extruded piece of mostly nickle wire that is passed through a series of rollers until it has a cross section of of something like a T with a round head. The round head is the 'crown' of the fret and that's the part that one sees on the fretboard.
The condition of the fret crown affects the 'tunability' and the action of the guitar and I have several important points to make about the fret crown. Firstly new virgin fret wire has a perfectly round top. A round fret crown has a narrow point of contact on the string when frets are in good condition they, however in the factory these perfect fret crowns are sanded or planed to remove minor humps in the fret board. I've seen big brand name guitars new from the factory with horrible flat fret crowns. Most often these chatter marks left from the sanding process are visible and they result in scratchy sound when string bending and the wider contact surface of the fret crown creates more buzz. Plus flat fret crowns effectively move the fret forward changing the intonation of the guitar and it gets harder to tune. The player chases the tune all around, you've seen this. A guitar tuned can well at the nut but bar chords up the neck sound off and then your chasing the tune all over and re-tuning to play this song then that one.
Start looking at the fret crowns of brand new guitars and you'll soon see this horrible condition on even the best brand name instruments. This is one of those trade offs they do at the factory because most players won't notice. But many musicians have good ears and it drives them crazy. The string 'Beats' because its a couple of sonts off.
Careful dressing and re-crowning of the frets is expensive and time consuming and requires a skilled craftsman which is why factories don't do it but its essential to excellent work. Fret work on a Emily Caroline Hand Crafted Guitar is a beautiful thing. Its the best you can get. And fret work on a repair job is the same here. My frets are round and gleam like a mirror. Fret work on an Emily Caroline Hand Crafted Guitar really stands out ! Musicians never ever fail to appreciate and enjoy their instrument more after fretwork by Emily Caroline Hand Crafted Guitars !
2
Sonts
The distance between two frets is a half step which is divided into what are called 'Sonts' Like a dollar is divided into 100 pennies a half step is divided into 100 'sonts'. When you tune two strings side by side until they are very close but one is 'Beating' it's going wah – wah – wah and the closer you get to a perfect tune the wah gets slower like wah - wah - wah - wah - wah until the beating disappears and the two strings are perfect.
This beating is sometimes a result of flat fret crowns.and at other times the reason is small mistakes in factory fret placement. Not all frets are in the perfect place, machines get dirty, blades get dull, hourly people make mistakes setting up their machines and sometimes hundreds of instrumenta are produced and these little mistakes are enough to cause one to chase tunings from the nut up the neck. That was an eye opener because we tend to trust the big brands so much. I had a great old guitar I played for many years only to discover that when I bought my first fret ruler that one of the frets was a little bit off and I had this exact problem, unrealized, I chased perfect tuning for many years.
Fret Condition
Over the years, as an instrument is played the frets wear down. This is often seen on the first few frets and buzzing frequently occurs first down on the nut. The solution is often a partial re-fret. A low fret followed by a high fret will buzz.
Fret wire is an extruded piece of mostly nickle wire that is passed through a series of rollers until it has a cross section of of something like a T with a round head. The round head is the 'crown' of the fret and that's the part that one sees on the fretboard.
The condition of the fret crown affects the 'tunability' and the action of the guitar and I have several important points to make about the fret crown. Firstly new virgin fret wire has a perfectly round top. A round fret crown has a narrow point of contact on the string when frets are in good condition they, however in the factory these perfect fret crowns are sanded or planed to remove minor humps in the fret board. I've seen big brand name guitars new from the factory with horrible flat fret crowns. Most often these chatter marks left from the sanding process are visible and they result in scratchy sound when string bending and the wider contact surface of the fret crown creates more buzz. Plus flat fret crowns effectively move the fret forward changing the intonation of the guitar and it gets harder to tune. The player chases the tune all around, you've seen this. A guitar tuned can well at the nut but bar chords up the neck sound off and then your chasing the tune all over and re-tuning to play this song then that one.
Start looking at the fret crowns of brand new guitars and you'll soon see this horrible condition on even the best brand name instruments. This is one of those trade offs they do at the factory because most players won't notice. But many musicians have good ears and it drives them crazy. The string 'Beats' because its a couple of sonts off.
Careful dressing and re-crowning of the frets is expensive and time consuming and requires a skilled craftsman which is why factories don't do it but its essential to excellent work. Fret work on a Emily Caroline Hand Crafted Guitar is a beautiful thing. Its the best you can get. And fret work on a repair job is the same here. My frets are round and gleam like a mirror. Fret work on an Emily Caroline Hand Crafted Guitar really stands out ! Musicians never ever fail to appreciate and enjoy their instrument more after fretwork by Emily Caroline Hand Crafted Guitars !
2
Sonts
The distance between two frets is a half step which is divided into what are called 'Sonts' Like a dollar is divided into 100 pennies a half step is divided into 100 'sonts'. When you tune two strings side by side until they are very close but one is 'Beating' it's going wah – wah – wah and the closer you get to a perfect tune the wah gets slower like wah - wah - wah - wah - wah until the beating disappears and the two strings are perfect.
This beating is sometimes a result of flat fret crowns.and at other times the reason is small mistakes in factory fret placement. Not all frets are in the perfect place, machines get dirty, blades get dull, hourly people make mistakes setting up their machines and sometimes hundreds of instrumenta are produced and these little mistakes are enough to cause one to chase tunings from the nut up the neck. That was an eye opener because we tend to trust the big brands so much. I had a great old guitar I played for many years only to discover that when I bought my first fret ruler that one of the frets was a little bit off and I had this exact problem, unrealized, I chased perfect tuning for many years.
These frets are shiny but appear to be very flat. This is a common problem, chords played on the nut and chords up the neck will not match because flat frets note sharp. These frets will tune more accurately when they are crowned properly.
These frets are very round and will tune well and will not buzz. This is a good example of a well crowned fretwork !
This is a good example of frets that have been planed to prevent buzzing. Unfortunately planing moves the contact point forward and the instrument notes sharp at that position. Its hard to tune for open string chords at the nut and still be in tune for bar chords.
Re-crowning takes special skill and is very expensive in the factory but its something we take special care to do correctly at Emily Caroline Hand Crafted Guitars
Re-crowning takes special skill and is very expensive in the factory but its something we take special care to do correctly at Emily Caroline Hand Crafted Guitars