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I would be interested in hearing any tips from anybody who has built a fan fret guitar, regarding their method of fret installation.

Obviously, on a multiscale guitar, only one fret is going to be a true arc of a circle, the further down the fretboard, the more the curve of the fret deviates from the arc of a circle and becomes more and more elliptical, so my guess is that since the frets cannot be pre-radiused, they are manually pre-shaped, and that gluing them down subsequently is a necessity ?

Has anybody made cauls which can be adapted for use with these elliptical frets, and pressed them in, or is hammering the only viable method ?

One last question, is it now, or will it ever be, feasible to install stainless steel frets on a multiscale guitar ?

EDIT: one further last question, what is, or should be, the accepted terminology for the one fret which runs at right angles to the center line of the fretboard on a multiscale guitar ? Is it the "parallel fret" (parallel to what?) is it the "right angled fret" (sounds clumsy) is it the "straight fret" (still doesn't sound right ) ...and yes, I do know that there actually need not be such a fret, but I would imagine that most builders would design a multiscale thataway ...

I have done a number of multiscale fret boards, at least a dozen .. I have pressed the frets using my John Watkins fret press cauls on all of them - simply check the radius of the board and press away. I do hammer the frets in around the neck heel, and sometimes tap the others after being pressed. The angles and changes in radius you are talking about are, IMO, small and irrelevant. One of my students used SS wire, and we used the same methods. Stop overthinking it all and just do it.

_________________
Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

+1 The only reason to arch the frets is to lock in the tangs as they are installed and like Tony said, they will follow the radius on the board anyway.

Murray,

Re: the fret naming dilemma ... could it be the perpendicular fret or perhaps the fret perpendicular

John