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I love this fret wire, but does it bother anyone else that almost all of the styles have the edges softened? It bothers me that no matter how well seated the fret is, there is always a little shadow underneath the edge of the fret. I wonder why they designed the fret wire like this. As much as I love it, it's starting to bother me enough that I may actually end up dumping it.

Or am I the only one that's bugged by this?

Stew Mac's wire is the same....

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The process of making the wire doesn't produce a sharp corner under the actual fret , there is a radius there. This can "Hold Off" the fret. Use a small rifler file or triangle file and break the edge corner of the fret slot. This will allow the fret to seat lower . Another benefit of this technique is when you have to pull a fret , this helps will less tear out of the fret board.

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I'm not talking about the shoulder at the tang. I'm talking about the edges of the crown. Instead of being flat bottomed, the edge is rounded.

http://www.jescar.com/fretwire.html

You can see that when fully seated, the very edge of the fret doesn't touch the fingerboard because it's curved. That makes it look like there's a gap. even when there's not. Rod says that StewMac's wire is the same but if it is it is FAR less curve because all of my StewMac jobs look like the fret is flush to the fingerboard.

Believe me, at first I thought I didn't bevel my fret slots enough, but after over beveling and over squeezing a couple of frets and still ending up with a little gap, it soon became clear what was going on.