Why guitar frets are made of different materials – and how it has a huge impact on your playing experience
Frets are the most abused metal on your guitar. Every note you play grinds a steel string into them. Every bend drags that string sideways across the crown. Eventually, the string wins, and you’re looking at divots, buzzing, and you’ll be in need of some maintenance. What that timeline looks like depends almost entirely on what your frets are made of.
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I’ve installed, leveled, and crowned a lot of frets in my time – both on my own builds and doing repair work for others. Over that time, I’ve worked with the three most common materials you’ll find used for guitar fretwire – nickel-silver, stainless steel and the lesser-seen EVO Gold. Each one has its pros and cons, but what’s the difference, and which one should you choose? Well, let’s discuss…
Image: Adam Gasson
Nickel-silver is the default for a reason
Before we start, a bit of mythbusting – nickel-silver actually contains no silver. The standard alloy is 18 per cent nickel, roughly 65 per cent copper, and the rest zinc. The nickel gives it that silvery color, which is how the name stuck. You’ll also see this alloy referred to as German silver or even maillechort – but regardless, there’s no actual precious metal here!
Nickel-silver is the wire on the overwhelming majority of guitars ever built. Most guitar builders use it, including Fender and Gibson. On the Vickers hardness scale, quality 18 percent nickel-silver wire from a maker like Jescar comes in around 200 HV. There’s also a softer 12 percent nickel version that shows up on some vintage-style wire, and it wears noticeably faster.
From a builder and tech perspective, nickel-silver is great to work with. It cuts clean with standard end nippers, fret ends dress quickly, and crowning files glide through it. A full refret in nickel-silver is a predictable job, which is part of why it’s the cheapest option at any repair shop.
The trade-off is the whole reason this article exists: it’s comparatively pretty soft and wears quickly. Play a nickel-silver fretted guitar hard for a few years and you’ll see flat spots and string divots, especially under the plain strings, which act like tiny round files. A gigging player might need a level and crown every couple of years and a full refret after two or three of those. There’s also the tone argument. Plenty of players insist nickel-silver sounds warmer and rounder than harder wire, but that really is in the ear of the beholder.
Image: Adam Gasson
Stainless steel is buy once, cry once
Stainless fret wire sits around 300 HV, roughly 50 percent harder than standard nickel-silver, with a tighter grain structure. In practical terms, your strings will die of old age long before they leave a mark on these frets. A properly installed stainless refret is close to a lifetime job for most players. Vigier has built guitars with stainless frets for decades, and companies like Music Man and Suhr now spec them across much of their lineups. Fender’s American Ultra guitars also spec stainless steel frets as standard.
Stainless is slick, so from a feel standpoint, bends glide a bit smoother, and there’s none of that faint gritty friction you feel on worn nickel-silver. Some players love it immediately. Others find it almost too slippery, like the string is skating.
Now the downside, and I say this as someone who has cursed through several stainless refrets: this material fights you. Cheap nippers will chip before the wire does. Files load up and dull fast. Crowning takes longer, polishing takes longer, and everything about the job eats consumables.
This is why shops charge a premium for stainless refrets, sometimes a substantial one. They’re not gouging you. They’re just having to replace their tools more often, and frankly, files can be expensive when you’re doing fret jobs every other day.
As far as tone goes, the theory says harder material reflects more string energy and sounds brighter. Some players swear they hear it. In my experience, the difference is smaller than the difference between two sets of strings. What you’re really buying is wear resistance and that slick bending feel.
Image: Adam Gasson
EVO Gold is the hard-to-find compromise
EVO Gold was Jescar’s answer to the middle ground. It’s a nickel-free copper alloy with titanium, originally developed for eyeglass frames for people with nickel allergies, and it lands at 250 HV, right between nickel-silver and stainless. The gold color isn’t plating. That’s the alloy itself, all the way through, so it never wears to a different color underneath.
On the bench, EVO behaves closer to stainless than its hardness number suggests, but it’s meaningfully kinder to tools. It cuts with a sharper snap than nickel-silver, seats well, and crowns without destroying files.
For a repair tech, it’s the best of the three to work with relative to the longevity it delivers. For a player, it wears far slower than nickel-silver, bends smoothly, and the hypoallergenic angle is a genuine benefit for the minority of players whose fingertips react to nickel.
The drawback here is availability. Jescar has confirmed that the supplier of the proprietary alloy stopped producing it, and that whatever wire remains in the supply chain is all there will ever be. The company still makes its nickel-silver and stainless lines, but genuine EVO Gold is done.
Other manufacturers sell gold-colored wire, including StewMac, whose version is a C425 copper alloy, but it isn’t the same material and doesn’t test as hard. If you find some real EVO in your chosen size and you want it, buy it now. I’ve already hoarded my stash!
Image: Adam Gasson
So which fretwire should I use?
If you’re keeping a vintage or collectible guitar original, matching the original spec matters for value, and a guitar that gets played a few hours a week will run for many years between fret jobs anyway.
If you play hard, bend a lot, or gig constantly, get stainless on your workhorse and stop thinking about frets forever. Pay the upcharge once. It’s cheaper than three nickel-silver refrets over the life of the instrument.
EVO Gold made the most sense as a factory spec and a middle option, and it looked fantastic against gold hardware. With the alloy gone, it’s becoming a curiosity. If your guitar already has it, enjoy it. Those frets will outlast most of the guitar they’re installed in.
One last thing: material matters less than the fretwork itself. A flawless level and crown on soft nickel-silver plays better than a sloppy stainless job every single time. Choose your material, but choose your tech more carefully!
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
