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Has anyone used these frets for a build, or played a guitar built with them? Being a geologist I find the idea very intriguing and it seems natural to blend minerals with wood; but I wonder the value of using quartz crystals for frets...

http://crystalfrets.com/

They look super cool if you're into that sort of bling. Try em and get back with us!

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Agreed, super cool looking. But according to the website they don't have the installation process down for accustics yet, but they are working on it. It also sounds like installation is something they must do in house (i.e., you can't just buy the frets and install them yourself). I'm sure getting a perfect marriage between fret and fretboard would be very difficult given the radi involved. Still, once they work out the kinks for acoustics, it may be cool to try.


This is from the Q&A comment section of the website:

Can they be fitted for mandolin?
M


Reply

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Crystal Frets says:
November 30, 2010 at 2:28 pm

Great question, thanks for asking. The short answer is yes, anything is possible! However, our installation process is currently optimized for electric guitars and basses only. We’re working on introducing Crystal Frets for acoustic guitars first, and then we’ll progress to other stringed instruments. Keep an eye out on the blog for latest developments!

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Aaron Craig

I bet leveling them would be a nightmare lol

Put 'em on your pre-war 0-45!!!
Psychedelic! Pharm Out! Gravy!

Re-frets?

I can't imagine they are any more durable than a metal fret - particularly considering the added risk of fracturing along with basic wear.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

"With quartz crystal frets, you get clear tone and extended sustain, because the density of the quartz keeps the string’s vibrational energy from going through or around the fret, where that energy would be lost. The string follows the the same molecular structure as the quartz, a single helix pattern that makes the string fully tunable, only in RPS. This not only boosts the sustain, it produces a warmer, fuller, more powerful sound, that makes a stock metal fret guitar sound flat."

Well, that tells me all I need to know.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Interesting. I made a nut and saddle of fossilized (permineralized) dino bone a few years ago, which is similar in composition. To say the least, I hated the sound. It made the sound harsh and cold(not something I like in a guitar). I did try different combinations, and it sounded ok with the nut being silicate and the saddle being ebony. But, I still ended up scrapping the idea. I would expect that silicate frets would be similar to silicate nut. Just my 2 cents though.

A colleague of mine has a word for this. He calls it "Nixnarf."

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

Okay I'll bit, what is "nixnarf"?

BTW installation is $1500, not surprising since they are basically using gemstone for the frets.

I'm seriously considering building a bass and having them installed.

Apparently Phil Lesh is on the hook for getting some.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Well, it sort of means nonsense, or some sort of foolishness.

BTW, quartz is quite common, the most common mineral on earth, and not an expensive gemstone. It is the same thing as sand.

I propose an experiment: find a quartz crystal and rub a guitar string on it and see how it holds up. I bet it starts to chip and wear without much effort. I could be wrong, but I can't imagine it will be better than stainless steel.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

Mohs Hardness

Stainless Steel 5.5 - 6.0
Quartz 7.0

I'm surprised they aren't also selling bridges, as in, the Brooklyn variety.

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David Malicky

Amplify it, find the right notes and you could open every garage door in the neighborhood!

There are strainless steel frets on the market, but not much people use it cause it's hard on string, incredibly hard on tools, and don't have many pros exept that they last longer. So, why going to something even harder?

It makes me laugh. Maybe i'm too closed mind, but it's just ridiculus.

''amazing tone'' ''incredible sustain'' ''perfect tone''. That's meaningless. These are empty words used by companies 'cause it sounds good and people always believe in Bull puckie.

1500$ fees for installation. I'll go with standard frets, i'll save 1497$, and will put it in something usefull to my guitar building, like good quality wood and tools.

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Francis Richer, Montréal
Les Guitares F&M Guitars

This is interesting, Phil. Quartz is more scratch resistant than SS. But, my experience with minerals like quartz is that it is quite easily fractured. Without having done the experiment, I can't say the harder material will hold up better than SS on a guitar, although it would be a good working hypothesis.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

This would be cool why ?

Anyway, if hardness was what one was after ceramic would be a good choice or high carbon hardened steel or diamonds or carbide.

Wouldn't crystal be vulnerable to shattering if you were accompanying a singer who hit just the right notes with the right volume........ "Just sayin"......... I mean I saw that on a commercial on tv once or maybe Bigfoot told me, I can't remember.

L.

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Cut to size.....Beat to fit.....Paint to match.

I think it was the Bud Light commercial Link, where the singer hits a high note and the bottles of beer the guy had smuggled in all blew up in his jacket.

Dang Darrel,
You must be a youngster. I was thinking of a old Memorex tape commercial. "Is it live or is it Memorex?"
Man I am getting old.
Link

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Cut to size.....Beat to fit.....Paint to match.

Ella Fitzgerald wasn't it?

Amethyst, citrine, tiger eye, bloodstone and jasper are all quartz gemstones.
Polished I would imagine quartz frets would easily last the life of the guitar without chipping or fracturing.
Crystal quartz isn't near as brittle as most people think.
I think quartz frets would look pretty darn cool!
I would request a matching nut, though.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I'd be pretty impressed with a player who could fracture stone with his fretting power

IIRC there have been companies using ceramic frets, but the installation is tough and has to be perfect. Offhand, I get the feeling that both Parker and Rick Turner have done it, but don't hold me to it.

It's a great idea, but the installation issues (we see bad fretwork all the time with nickel silver) and the base expense of making non-extruded frets make it prohibitive. If polished to jewelry smoothness then I doubt they would wear strings noticeably before they were so gunned up from playing that you'd change them anyhow.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Me too, but a little bit of time and the natural movement of wood, coupled with its ability to compress on the end grain and hold form 'v' the immovable rock solid no give, none expanding nature of quarts, and I reckon as the quartz makes room for itself, it will become loose in the slot, and with that it will loose support. Then being so brittle and thin, it will start to crack very easy even with minimal impact. Once broken, I imagine it will start falling out in no time. But you would have plenty of warning before you had any breakage, cause the constant buzzing and dead notes during play would drive you nuts.

Maybe if you had them installed in an acrylized fretboard as Larry Davies of Gallery Hardwoods suppies they would be OK, but in standard wood I reckon you would need 'rock' in yer head to pay 1.5k.




I believe that statement to be completely true Bob, but then the same can be said when people argue that stainless steel frets wear strings..Well yes they do I guess, but if the frets have been properly polished, then the strings will need changing 'long' before the frets could cause them to wear to any level of detriment. So with that in mind, the only possible benefit I see to quartz is one of aesthetics...and that is only if your into that kind of look....As for any tonal advantage/disadvantage, I remain firmly in the camp that believes the frets have minimal, if any impact either way. IMHO they just need to be hard, but there is a point of diminished return in that regard so to my mind, this mobs spiel beings to smell of snake oil.

Cheers

Kim

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't glass made from quartz? I would imagine tone and sustain would be similar to holding a glass slide stationary on a string and playing it. The haunting beauty of a slide guitar comes from the technique used, not necessarily the slides material. Can you readily pick out a metal slide from a glass one or a ceramic one on a recording? I personally can not. And if I hold my slide still over a fret with out applying any "feeling", I only hear a very slight difference from the fretted note. Seems awful expensive for a change in tonal quality that could most likely also be accomplished simply with a different type of strings. Than of course the question of what are you gonna do when your customer brings the thing back with a couple of cracked frets that now snag the strings?
Brian

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Quarts and glass are both silicon dioxide. Commercial glass also has other ingredients depending on the desired properties of the end material.

I am thinking of obsidian, which is a glassy mineral. In the making of arrowheads, you need only lightly rub the mineral with a bone or other type of rock and the thing will produce flakes quite easily. Just because something is scratch resistant (hardness) doesn't make it tough. In fact, making a material more malleable sometimes makes it better suited to a particular application.

One good example of material optimization is Japanese plane blades. Japanese blades are of two types of steel - a thin piece of extremely hard blade metal called ha-gane 鋼 (lit. "edge metal") is forge-welded to a softer piece of metal called ji-gane (lit. "base metal" 地金). The function of the softer base metal is to absorb shock, and to protect the more brittle ha-gane from breaking. (Wiki)

It would be a fun experiment to try glass frets, but they might not be better then metal ones, from a toughness perspective. Imagine bumping your neck against something and breaking a fret into shards. For my money, metal works just fine.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck