Official Luthiers Forum!

I have an acoustic guitar in for a requested level, crown and polish. It has frets that were Stew Mac's medium/medium. They were .039" tall when new. It was a well played guitar with fairly deep string wear and after a complete level, crown and polish the frets now sit at exactly .030" tall. What do you think? Too low? Ever play a guitar with that low of frets or lower?

.030" is fine provided that the player, you in this case, are ok with the feel of .030" frets. In terms of functionality .030" is still pretty high if you are looking for working limits. I've recrowned .014" frets before with a three corner file since they were too low for commercial diamond frets and the frets functioned fine after that.

The real question is how well will each specific player do with frets that low. I think that you will be fine though.

For kicks Google G*bson fretless wonder without the asterisk.

Too low for me but totally individual to the player. Down at the bridge end, less than .020" can be ok for some.

I usually hold the string down spanning the two lowest pits and slide a feeler under the string while discussing the plan w/ a customer.
How low they will be after cleaning up is part of the discussion on wire size preference. I have to know where the height will come out before I start to have a meaningful conversation.

Hesh beat me to it.

Anyone check-out Zager Guitars ? They're supposed to specialize in low frets.
Easy to play, but depends on what you're playing. I've seen the website but never
never tried one. Anyone have any first hand experience ?

Yup, have first hand experience with them.....

How bout them Tigers.... wonder if they will win the series this year.....

What I will say is this one hit wonder, Danny Zager figured out something that many Luthiers and f*ctories have not figured out.... What I speak of is Zager's business model exploits the idea that most new guitars out there/here are set-up lousy... and that the old model of 75% set-up done at f*ctory with final set-up needing to be done at the brick and mortar reseller persists. Problem is that the brick and mortar reseller part has sadly perished in many parts of the country.

Even Martin does not ship their guitars with a final set-up. They rely on their brick and mortar dealers to dial in the things and make them civilized for prospective buyers.

What Zager offers is not so much anything special or different about the physical instruments but the concept that they are superbly set-up or so they are supposed to be and Zager says he does the final set himself.

I've worked on some Zagers and will say that they are very well set-up.

What Zager understands though and my hat is off to him for this is that the set-up is the human interface to an instrument. It makes no difference if it has a sound port, stainless frets, adi top, sounds like a million bucks if it plays like crap... Zager exploits the idea that in the age of the folks who do the final set-up, the Mom and Pop stores being absent Zager instruments may seem easier to play than others because out of the box they likely are having had a final set-up.

This is also what I have been saying for some years now on this forum about the "human interface" the set-up and just how very important it is. A radial rosette likely won't be appreciated on any new ax if the action sucks so very badly that you can use the thing to slice hard boiled eggs.....

Call Zager what you will and argue all you wish about the original origin of his instruments... but he's carved a successful business model out of the reality that f*ctories and even some individual Luthiers are leaving lots of money on the table by not understanding and acting on the fact that folks need and want very well set-up instruments.

We had a client, still do... who had a similar instrument that was well set-up and billed as US made or so the client was misled into thinking this was the case. It was NOT a Zager but another brand doing the exploitation of well set-up instruments thing. When we told the guy that his US made $400.... guitar was anything but he blew up at the manufacturer or should I say promoter and donated the thing to us to repurpose for a homeless guy.... Being US made was so very important to this customer that he didn't want the thing in his house if it was an import.

Nonetheless we made this one the third instrument for a specific homeless young man (previous guitars we gave him were destroyed in fights on the streets of Ann Arbor...). Last we heard our friend had a girlfriend, a job, was back in community college, and lived in an apartment with the girlfriend.... But I digress.... This was not a Zager mind you and it's not what turned around Travis's life I'm sure, Travis did...., but what a good application for this donated instrument I'll say!

Anyway Zager Guitars have a willing market, folks who want very well set-up instruments. Might be something to consider important in all that the rest of us do too.....

I purchased a Zager so we could evaluate. Interestingly the guitar arrived perfectly tuned to concert pitch. As Hesh mentioned Zager does a good job of tweaking the normal factory set up, I was impressed. I actually copied this marketing model and was offering a similar product/service using Blueridge guitars, that worked out well until Saga demanded very large minimum orders. I also adopted Denny's practice of spreading the string spacing by placing the "E's" closer to the FB edges.

_________________
Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

I never heard of Zager before but having a look over there it's well.. interesting?

I did just finish a Telecaster though. A guitar my brother started building and gave up on about 10 years ago and recently just handed me all the parts. He had bought some super thin and skinny fret wire for it. I'm a jumbo fret guy even on acoustic guitars but I went ahead and fretted it with the skinny stuff anyway and well, I really kind of like it. So perhaps Mr. 2525 is on to something?

What a curious website.

"A special fret design that reduces painful string bite and fatigue"

Are the frets indeed some kind of specially developed, custom profile? Or is most of the R&D budget spent in the area of marketing?

No need to speculate -- just buy one, see for yourself if you don't like it, they'll take it back no questions asked expenses covered both ways.

_________________
Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Maybe factories could sell there instruments to vetted brick and mortar shops that had someone skilled on hand to adjust the setup to the player!
Lower the action, put on lighter gauge strings, make a new nut if different spacing was desired, even give some useful feedback to the factory!
Just imagine!
I know, we could call them something like........."dealers!"

Nah, it'll never work.

I'm sure they would, if I lived in the USA. But I suspect they wouldn't wanna cough up for the extra 10,000 miles or so (each way) across the ocean waves. I've found that few US businesses do!




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