Official Luthiers Forum!

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

You losers stick with your cheap quartz frets, I'm calling up DeBeers and going pure diamond baby!

Heh, I said they'd work, not that you wouldn't be insane to pay $1500 for frets when SS frets come on a roll . If done and installed right, then I don't think there's a non-high-impact related risk of breakage, but at the end of the day they're a vanity item and I'm sure some of my inlays would crack just as well if someone succeeded in whapping them against the corner of a granite countertop.

I agree completely with the statement above as a takeaway, though.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Some more nixnarf:

The secret behind the ToneRite® is its ability to continually produce and efficiently transfer vibrational energy into an instrument, safely recreating and magnifying the physics that occur naturally while playing. This stimulation produces a change to the integrated components within an instrument and increases their ability to resonate together as a whole. The result is added volume and instruments that are easier to play with a sound that is more full and balanced. Not only will your instrument sound better but the notes themselves will come easier, allowing you to play more difficult passages with less fatigue.

---Tonerite website

Mike, how do you know? Do you own a Tonerite?
Some respectable builders use it and find it quite effective, especially on carved top instruments, which is not hard to understand how it can be.
The quartz fret thing does not look serious, obviously. Typical pseudo-science babble.
SS frets (or any other material) do not wear strings faster than other frets if properly installed and polished.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

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

What? That could be right out of my brochure!

This isn't the only product out there that requires one to farm out one's frets. It's not a trend I really like, but if clever people keep putting stuff out there, there may eventually be a home run. It does seem to me that luthiers should have at least a minor interest in:

1) how to price in external contractors who are eating into our nut, and yet we have building and after sales cost arising from this stuff.

2) what it says about the premium prices that may be possible out there.

Whoa! No, I do not own a tonerite nor will I until they publish scientific data proving their product works. I do however, own an acquarium air pump. And I am not sticking it on my guitars either. I don't for one second see how you can spot the obvious "Typical pseudo-science babble" on the quartz fret site and not see the same thing on the Tonerite site. I actually like the look of the quartz frets!

Sorry for the side track... back to the main topic.

Interesting thought, that whether or not the tone-rite "works" depends on.....what?
Is it purely subjective, the way spruce vs cedar is?
Does it even DO anything? If not, then it's purely a head game and can't even be evaluated subjectively, the way a spruce vs cedar top can.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Why do you ALWAYS have to interject your self into EVERYTHING? The ONLY reason people like Tonerite is personal preference. NOTHING wrong with that. A number of folks are beating up a product (crystal frets) they have NO experience with. Thats pretty par for the course here. The Tonerite has been discussed and argued about ad-nausem here. I am not the only one who thinks its garbage that the only way you can learn more from them is buy one so you can join their stupid forum. And there is NO scientific evidence it works. Period. It's not me using the word "physics"... its the Tonerite folks. Psuedo-physics that is. If some of you guys took what you were doing more seriously and spent less time attacking people you disagree with, and less time dreaming about pencils, this site might have more to offer and be less the club-chic it is becoming.

Attack away Filippo... have your fun.

Mike

No, there is no proof. Only anecdotal. You get a few music stars and pro-builders using it and suddenly its the real thing. The site offers no proof. As to the physics of cedar and spruce, these are well documented (materials data). But in the end, it is still up to the end user what they like best. You can't make a 1982 Cabernet faster than it took. You can't (generally) get rich over night. You can't build the best guitar ever on your first attempt. You certainly don't play a guitar like Eric Clapton or Stephen Bennett on your first or second try. You can't do a lot of things that people have been doing for lifetimes that took lifetimes to learn. One cheapens almost anything and everything when they suggest you can. I think if someone uses a Tonerite and is happy with their results, whatever that may be, then fine. But without scientific evidence, promotion of said item seems downright tacky. Sort of like talking your friends into buying a time-share condo. Just check out their website (Tonerite) and you will see what I mean. Good luck finding any proof.

Mike (who has said his piece... this was about Crystal Frets, I would suggest Laurent, Filippo, others that if you want to keep talking about this, start another thread.... my appologies to the OP)

Hey Fillipo, go dream and post more about pencils.

Thank you all for the entertainment. No apologies necessary.

Goodin (OP)

Has anyone posting here actually used or at least come in contact with Crystal Frets who could give some real insight?

None of us really need to. We just know.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Crystal is for chandeliers......Charlie Pride told me a long time ago....!!!!!
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

New product.
Give it a try if you got the bucks.
I like frets made of maple, flush wih the fretboard.
They work, and they are really inexpensive!
As far as the tonerite,
wouldn't it be the same if you put your guitar in front of a speaker playing Bach or Van Halen?
Better to play vinyl instead of a CD,
because the wave patterns from vinyl is rounder than the square waves of the CD.
Just kidding, maybe...
Monster cables are better, NOS vacuum tubes are better, tight grained spruce tops are better,
braz rosewood is better, a solid gold amp chassis is better, stop me!
Aaaahhh.
They are trying to sell us something.
Basically, a guitar is an insane contraption, built of very thin wood, with lots of string tension, held together with glue,
and has been built basically the same way for many years.
Change some things, not others.
Phew.