EVO frets after 10 years

[Don Grieser]

Just the beginning of wearing a flat spot on top of the fret crown and the tiniest of grooves. Can barely feel it rubbing your fingernail across it. Lots of playing time on these frets--I've owned it 6 or 7 years now and pretty sure nothing was done to them before I got it. Would you recommend I have anything done to them?

[rickbella]

Time for fret dressing. If you are adventurous, you can do it yourself. SteMac has the tools. If you don't want to experiment, take it to a good luthier for filing, buffing, leveling, polishing, etc. You won't regret it.

[Denman John]

I had Michael Heiden refret my Kimble with EVOs last year and hope to get at least 10 years out of them. I wore out the original frets after 5 years of almost daily use. Happy so far and no real signs of any wear yet.

Play it in good health!

[Don Grieser]

I'm thinking I'll wait till I can get this one in Michael's hands since he made it. It still plays just fine--no problems. I really don't see the point of silver frets any more.

[CES]

I agree, Don. If it’s still playing and intonating well and you’re not having issues with buzzing, I wouldn’t rush to have work done on it, but, knowing there’s likely to be some wait, I’d put it on Michael’s radar...

Not a luthier, btw...

[Don Grieser]

It sure sounds good with some fresh strings. Those Curt Mangans still sounded fine after 6 months, but now I hear what I was missing.

[Rob Roy]

I've done lots of fret level/dress jobs over the past 10 years. I don't see anything on those frets that would be affecting tone or playability. You've probably got 6 more years before you'll really have to do anything. I've put EVO in all my personal instruments and the refrets I've done for others. I think my oldest personal mando has 7 years on the standard 0.080" EVO and is just starting to show a hint of wear in a few select places.

From what I've read here and on other forums, it seems the consensus among luthiers is that EVO has roughly 4x the lifespan of standard nickel/silver. How fortunate that you own a Heiden, I'm envious.

[John Bertotti]

Learning to dress your frets isn't a bad thing and it is relaxing, well at least to me. But, I have never worked with the harder frets like EVO or SS.

[Tavy]

EVO will last nearly forever without any divots forming. However, the underlying wood may move resulting in uneven frets eventually - exactly how long depends on many factors - the wood, how well the frets were fitted, and even how much your humidity changes. I would generally caution against a DIY job on EVO: while it's trivial to level, it's really quite tricky to dress well, regular nickel wire is a walk in the park in comparison.

I would also say that it's nearly impossible to judge whether a fret-level-and-dress is required by eyeballing the frets: for example I've just done a guitar for someone that appeared to have absolutely pristine frets - indeed it did - but the guitar was old enough that things were no longer level enough to give really clean notes - after a level and dress the sound changed for the better really quite dramatically. Strangely, it's also hard to tell whether work is required by just listening: for one thing the changes are so slow and gradual that you're most unlikely to notice them, I've had instruments in that obviously sounded wrong to me, but didn't to the owner because the changes had been so gradual. I've also had instruments in that sounded just fine to me, but the owner insisted they weren't - and after some work it turned out the owner was quite right!

So you may have to just try it and see... or not