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Can anyone say roughly how much more durable Evo wire is than Jescar nickel silver?
Have a client coming in says 6 months is maximum he's getting out of frets and suggested trying Evo.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I play EVO daily and after 5 years my frets are barely marked. Certainly wouldn't be the case if they were nickel-silver. I would be comfortable stating that EVO would be twice as durable.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I get a life span right between nickle and stainless and I am hard on frets...

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Brian

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

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Dave has a long-term durability test of EVO, stainless, NS wire happening. He made a machine based on a sewing machine and with Andy Birko's very valued skill and help lots of CNCed miniature fret board blocks that have been fretted with he various wires.

The machine, the sewing machine does the fretting and Dave also rigged up a counter to count the iterations.

Although results are not completed yet he might be willing to describe some of his observations. I can say that everyone who has commented so far is right in line what what the testing has showed us though.

I'll let Dave know that you guys are discussing this and see if he wants to weigh-in. He's holding down he fort today making his time limited so it might be later before he weighs-in.

Good question Colin and Dave's objective was to have definitive answers for our clients AND the article that these tests will likely result in.

Lastly we have some clients who wear out stainless in 6 months.... over and over again..... I excuse myself from shaking their hands telling them that I need my hands to make my living...

I've heard anecdotal accounts from a few respectable luthiers who find EVO to be longer wearing than stainless. Other accounts point to a bit less durable than stainless. My limited controlled tests so far are really too close to tell, and seem to indicate some dependency on playing style (one may be a bit more wear resistant against heavy direct string pressure, the other may fare better with lighter touch and heavy bends).

In either case, it's certainly way more wear resistant if you're comparing it against any NS wire. It's closer to the range of stainless, whether a bit more, or less, or the same under various conditions, at the very least it's closer to stainless than nickel.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

I would echo what other have said here. Considerable more life then NS, not as much as stainless. Which is how it should be based on hardness. LMI had a hardness comparison on their website at one point. NS wire measured 200 on the Vickers hardness scale, EVO 250, and stainless 300. I've had EVO on some of my local customer's instruments for 8 years or so and only in the past year have I noticed very minor wear on a couple.

If I had someone who was killing NS frets in 6 months I would probably tell them to go with stainless, but EVO is a much better option then regular NS.

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

Related: Anyone "hear" the differences in wire?

It's a consideration in my world subjective as this topic most certainly is.

Has anyone come up with a practical way to A-B the three?

I am personally an ss guy.

We did informal A/B blind listening, playing tests and I failed it and could not tell the difference between stainless and NS (not sounding tinny nickel silver) wire...

But that was with an electric with some frets SS and some NS and only the tester knew which ones.

I believe the difference is noticeable to me on acoustics though and I'm not alone. Informally too about half our clients who we asked about this agree with me and half don't.

Get this the one acoustic that I kept and has EVO I hear a tinny sound that I don't hear in my NS acoustics that I also built. And no I have not been smoking the drapes, I hear what I hear.....